


Sons of Cybertron

by LovelyLadyCon



Series: A New Beginning [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: A Transformers Prime/IDW mash-up with canon-divergence, Accident, Amica Endurae, Angst, Apologies, Arguing, CNA and Transformer Genetics, Canon-Typical Violence, Close call, Conjunx Endura, Court Proceedings, Cybertronian Caste System, Cybertronian politics, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Forgiveness, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Past Prostitution, Implied Past Sexual Servitude, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Knock Out Wants to Help But it Doesn't Always Work Out for the Best, Long Shot, Medical Procedures, Mention of OCs - Freeform, Mnemosurgery, Multi, Near Death, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-sexual Spark Merging, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Secrets, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Build, Team as Family, Trial/Tribunal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-18 00:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 48
Words: 260,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLadyCon/pseuds/LovelyLadyCon
Summary: The war for Cybertron is over, but now the “winning team” must pick up the pieces and rebuild their planet.Knock Out struggles to integrate himself into a team still reeling from the loss of their beloved leader, whose members all share a troublesome and sometimes secretive past with the former Decepticon that most of them would rather forget.“For in my spark I know that this is not the end, but merely a new beginning.”- Optimus PrimePart I is now complete! Please keep an eye out for Part II starting late September/early October 2019!





	1. A Chance Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written any fanfiction before, so if anyone has any comments, tips, or Transformers-related info they want to share, please do so! Thanks for reading!

Whenever things got a little too quiet on the Nemesis, Knock Out would make up an excuse to get off the ship. He would usually use the almost-always-legitimate excuse that they were low on medical supplies. He used the term “medical supplies” loosely, of course, which could amount to anything from spare body parts to fast-patches to anti-rust serums to a nifty little lubricant he had found on Earth called “WD-40”.

Megatron used to force another mech to accompany Knock Out, or sometimes several Vehicons at once, regardless of the destination or reason for the excursion. “For protection”, the Deception leader would say, with a smile of sharp teeth and a narrowed gaze that betrayed his true reason for never allowing Knock Out to disembark unattended: He did not trust Knock Out to return. The unnecessary chaperoning went on for several stellar-cycles after Breakdown’s death, which Knock Out found insulting. Did the Lord of the Decepticons really think that the only thing that had tied Knock Out to the Nemesis was his partner? 

Damn, Megatron was smart.

But eventually, as one cycle turned over into another, the Vehicon entourage became smaller, and the other mechs forced to accompany Knock Out ended up leaving him alone for hours at a time to scavenge by himself. Only after Knock Out, on multiple occasions, had returned to the ship without his escort in tow did Megatron finally relax the reigns and allow him to fly solo. As long as Knock Out returned, and especially with something useful, no one ever questioned his loyalty. 

Knock Out supposed that’s what it should be called at this point: loyalty. The urge remove himself from the ship permanently had dwindled significantly over the years. In the beginning, he had hatched several plans to leave, or rather, escape, is what it ought to have been called, but he’d lost his nerve every time the situation and circumstances permitted it. Physically leaving would have been easy enough, it was the staying hidden part that gave him cold feet. Where would he go? Who would accept him after working under the Decepticons for so long?

More importantly, who could he trust that would be willing to reciprocate that trust? Of course, the Autobots had offered, at least Optimus Prime had. But the Matrix-bearer offered Autobot allegiance to anyone; even Starscream once returned to the Nemesis laughing about how Prime had asked him to join. This naturally meant that the Autobots were a desperate lot, willing to take any fool with a half-functioning brain module, and were all, therefore, complete morons. Sure, there were the Neutrals, and roaming bands of space pirates eking out an existence on the fringes of the galaxy, waiting for the war to end, but Knock Out had burned those bridges long ago, and besides, they were poor, starving, and generally dirty. Knock Out had grown accustomed to the finer things Megatron had to offer, even if those things paled in comparison to what constituted as “finer” back in Cyberton’s prewar days. And so, Knock Out remained with the Decepticons, even when, on rare occasion, the tiny voice inside his head again begged him to _just leave_.

Knock Out was currently on one such unaccompanied jaunt on Cyberton. Somewhere between Kaon and the Rust Corridor, he was legitimately scavenging for voltage regulators when his proximity alert sensors flared a warning across his internal feed: An energy reading approximately two-hundred meters to his left. He froze, locking every joint in place as he focused and refocused his optics towards the pinkish glow of the blurred silhouette of the form that his HUD was warning him about. A steady scroll of information continuously updated beside the blurry figure the longer Knock Out stared at it, showing its distance, speed, size, composition, and heat registry of any weapons the figure might be readying. Knock Out would fight if he had to, though he generally preferred a quick and clean retreat. No sense in scuffing up the finish.

Of course, that very finish made him a spectacular target, especially on Cybertron, where millions of years of war had wiped out not only every resemblance of civilization, but most of the planet’s color palette as well. Those colors that did remain were all rusty variations of brown and dull grays darkened by black shadows. Even during daylight hours, the world looked sullen and void of life forms. Knock Out’s sparkly, bright red armor against a barren wasteland made him a virtual bull’s eye. At least on Earth he could pull off into a parking lot and blend in, but not on Cyberton. No, Cyberton was dangerous. Despite its seeming desolation, things still lived there, unpleasant things that Knock Out would rather not have to deal with.

A few more seconds of silent observation gave Knock Out enough data to indicate that the life form that was drawing steadily nearer was, however, not a threat. It was small, it was unarmed, and, judging by the way it paused every few meters, it was confused, or perhaps lost. This meant that now Knock Out was to be the predator, instead of the prey. Smirking at his good fortune, he unlocked his joints from their previous freeze and hunched his shoulder, slinking just below the line of ruble and robot corpses he had been pillaging from a few moments earlier. He slowly worked his way towards his target, which now registered as another bot. 

Pressing a clawed finger to the side of his chest plates, a compartment opened, revealing the electrified staff Knock Out favored for all things combat-related. Taking the short metal object into his hand, a quick press against its midsection sent both ends telescoping outwards, one tip crackling in a shower of sparks. Knock Out paused behind a larger stack of cracked barriers, noting that the other bot had frozen in place upon hearing the sound of the staff reaching full extension.  


“Show yourself,” Knock Out commanded of the other, who hesitated for a moment before slowly inching his way out from the other side of the debris.

First Aid did not like confrontation. He was not a fighter. He was not of the Warrior caste, or even a simple foot soldier. First Aid was a Medic, and a good one. He did not carry weapons because he knew that to use them on someone meant that he would be responsible for their suffering, and he could not bear to see another bot suffer. What this all amounted to was that in the medbay, as a doctor and a surgeon, he was an invaluable teammate and asset to any fighting force. On the battlefield and in the face of danger however, he was almost worthless, and often called a coward, even by his own comrades, although it was only said in jest, at least when it was said to his face.  


First Aid had been aware of the other bot, probably before it had been aware of him, because he saw it freeze in place over the desecrated corpses it was so violently pulling apart. Perhaps the red bot was attempting to blend into the surroundings, or make itself more difficult to detect, but it was already too late. First Aid had pegged it some five-hundred meters back, and had purposefully headed in its direction. He had expected some hostility, so he was already prepared when the command was issued.

“Don’t shoot, I’m not armed!” First Aid slowly stepped out from behind the ruble, both hands raised to the other bot. He found himself looking up several feet to get a good view of the other bot’s face, before he caught sight of the staff, one end aimed squarely at his chest. “I….I see _you_ are, though.”

Knock Out’s red optics narrowed at the other mech before him, his gaze flicking from First Aid’s face, to the four red marks of the Medic cross painted on his bulky white shoulders, and the Autobot badge fit squarely in the center of his chest. The bot looked oddly familiar, though Knock Out couldn’t quite place it in his memory banks.

“What is your Designation?” Knock Out demanded, still standing over the other, staff unwavering. 

“F-First Aid…,” the Medic stumbled over his own name, hands still in the air. “I’m a Medic….I crash-landed my ship just a few klicks over there a couple days ago….,” he pointed to the east, slowly, so as not to make any sudden movements with his hands.

“A ship, huh? What kind of ship?”

“A Kn-Knightcross 47-E,” First Aid was glad to see Knock Out begin to lower the staff already at the mention of the ship.

“A Knightcross, eh?” Knock Out perked a brow to that, glancing towards the eastern horizon. “What’s its status?”

“It’s ummm….” First Aid blinked behind his blue visor in the direction of the ship, and then turned back to Knock Out. “Well…when I left, it was on fire.”

At this, Knock Out’s flared shoulders slumped a bit. A ship like that could have been stripped for all kinds of valuable goods and parts. “Damn”, he swore, twirling the rod around in his sharp fingertips. The tip that crackled with electricity hummed through the air dangerously close to First Aid’s head before Knock Out pressed the midsection of the staff to retract the ends and placed it back into the storage compartment on the side of his chest.

First Aid vented a sigh of relief at this action, which clearly meant the taller, red mech saw him as no threat. He was used to this type of dismissal, and in fact relied on it for his self-preservation. Then again, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “You umm….You didn’t tell me _your_ Designation,” First Aid dared to state, slowly lowering his hands.

“Knock Out,” he glanced First Aid up and down a moment longer before rolling his optics and simply dismissing the other bot, just like that. Autobot or no, this little pipsqueak wasn’t about to try anything. Knock Out turned his wheeled shoulder blades to the other and strode back towards the pile of long-dead robot corpses. “That’s a shame about your ship.”

First Aid watched Knock Out waltz away for a moment before he reluctantly followed. “Uhhh..y-yeah…yeah it was a rough landing. So, ummm...what are you doing here?”

“Looking for spare parts,” Knock Out paused in his removal of an arm from one of the corpses, grasping the limp appendage between both his hands as he glanced to First Aid. “You got any?”

“Pardon?” First Aid could only stare, wide-eyed at the dead bodies being mutilated before him.

“Spare parts: Do you have any?” Knock Out repeated, before he yanked the arm off the dead bot at its rotator cuff with a sickening “pop” sound.

“Ohh, uhhh…no…No, I don’t,” First Aid winced at the popping noise. “Is that really necessary?”

“Where else should I get them?” Knock Out chucked the arm away and leaned down over the body, reaching inside the hole he’d just created to feel around for the chest plate release lock from the inside.

“I…..I dunno…I guess.”

Knock Out paused then as the corpse’s chest plates opened with a “click”. He removed his arm from the gaping shoulder socket and pulled the rusted chest plates open even further, both his hands now deep in the dead mech’s chassis. He eyed First Aid suspiciously. “Didn’t you say you’re a Medic?”

“Yes, so?”

“So, you fix bots.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, so where do you get _your_ parts? Your parts to fix bots?”

“Oh…Ohhh,” First Aid said, as though he was just now understanding the conversation. “Well, they’re stored in the supply cages by the Quartermasters,” and then First Aid blinked again. “Are you also a Medic?”

“Yes,” Knock Out looked back to the opened chest, his nimble digits digging around in the guts of the dead bot. First Aid’s response regarding the location of body parts did not go unnoticed by him.

“But you don’t wear the sigil,” First Aid noted, and pointed to one of the red crosses that adorned both of his own shoulders.

“No, I don’t.”

“And you…you’re also a….,” First Aid paused before he asked his next question. He didn’t want to offend the other bot but, well, Knock Out’s red optics had him nervous, “…You’re a…Decepticon?”

Knock Out chuckled at the question, though his optics remained on his work. “Close enough. I won’t ask what you are,” he gave a quick side-nod towards the Autobot badge on First Aid’s chest.

“Well, yes…B-but Medics aid all bots in need, regardless of their affiliation!” First Aid made sure to annotate that, raising his chin a bit as he spoke.

“Hmmm…I suppose.”

“What medical school did you attend?”

“IMA,” Knock Out cringed for a moment, fiddling under the chest plates of the dead mech before he yanked his arm back, then smiled at the voltage regulator he now held in his hand.

“Iacon Medical Academy! I taught there for several years…,” First Aid narrowed his gaze as he searched his database. “Wait a klick…..I think I remember you now! You were at IMA right before the war broke out, right? I was student-teaching back then. I don’t think you were in any of my classes, but I _knew_ you looked familiar,” he accessed a file off his internal catalog and skimmed its contents. “Knock Out. Class Number 5054, cycle….,” and then he gasped, blinking at the data that scrolled across his field of vision before he dismissed it and turned back. “Knock Out, you were a _horrible_ student!”

“Guilty as charged,” Knock Out shrugged, offering a smile so charming that even First Aid found himself enthralled by it, but only for a nanoklick, before he frowned again.

“You failed at least four classes…..”

“So?” Another panel in Knock Out’s chassis popped open, and he carefully placed the pilfered voltage regulator inside the subspace before pressing the panel closed with a finger.

“You _failed_ ‘Berthside Manner 101’? Who _does_ that!?”

“Psh, that professor had it out for me,” Knock Out waved a hand dismissively and then glared his red optics down at First Aid. “Why do you even have _access_ to my transcripts!?”

“Because I was one of the last student-teachers to leave the academy before it was shut down due to the war. I was tasked with archiving the records in the hopes that someday the school would reopen……You didn’t graduate?” First Aid turned his gaze up to the larger mech for a moment, then refocused his optics on the data that crossed the internal HUD of his visor. “You had one semester left, and you dropped out?”

“I was too busy with other things.”

“One semester!”

“There was a war starting!”

“Four classes!” First Aid held up four of his red fingers.

“Well, according to _you_ , I was horrible, so I _clearly_ would have flunked out anyway!”

“You’re not even a licensed practitioner then!”

“Hey, I can ‘medic’ as well as the next bot! Just because I didn’t graduate doesn’t mean I didn’t learn!”

“You shouldn’t even be practicing!” Despite the blue visor, First Aid could still manage a serious glare up to Knock Out.

“My lack of a piece of paper with my name on it doesn’t make me any less capable! I’ve saved thousands of lives!” Knock Out jerked a pointy thumb towards his own chest plates. 

“You’re a fraud! Do the Decepticons know?”

“The _Decepticons_ don’t _care_ because despite me _not_ having a degree, I still manage to save them from the brink of death on a regular basis….”

“…because they’re constantly having their afts handed to them by the Autobots?” First Aid smiled, interrupting.

“…because they get hurt, just like you do,” it was Knock Out’s turn to glare. The little bot had some bearings on him to say those words, being smaller, and weaponless, Knock Out would give him that. He was tempted to smack First Aid upside his dome piece, but that glimpse of the tiny Medic’s attitude amused him. “So,” Knock Out continued, turning his nose up and crossing his arms, “you can call me whatever you want, I don’t care, and you know who else doesn’t care? Every bot out there that’s still running around with a lit spark, thanks to me. Or are you suggesting that in the heat of battle, when someone went down, I should have thrown my servos up and said ‘Oh no! No, _I_ can’t staunch those wounds! I don’t have a certificate for that hanging on my wall!’ You haven’t been out in the field much, have you,” it wasn’t a question.

“Well….no, but….”

“So, you’re one of those Medics? Never leaves the medbay, prefers planned and well-rehearsed surgeries in a sterile, controlled setting, never sets foot in the field. So you don’t really _understand_ the urgency or limited resources a Field Medic has to deal with in a chaotic and dangerous environment, while his comrades are clawing at his legs, lying in pools of their own Energon, screaming for their…”

“Okay, stop….just stop,” First Aid put his hands up over his audials, wincing. “Yes, you’re right, I do prefer that. So sue me.”

“Tsk, typical pampered Autobot,” Knock Out rolled his optics once more. Placing both hands on his hips, he leaned down over the smaller mech, his gaze narrowing. “So, what I am I to do with you, then?”

“’ _Do_ ’ with me?” First Aid blinked, taking a careful step backwards. “How about you…help me fix my ship?”

Knock Out shook his head, taking a step forward to make up for First Aid’s backwards movement. “You said it was on fire. It’s probably blown up by now.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re probably right,” First Aid frowned behind his mask at the thought.

“Which means you’re stuck with me,” Knock Out smirked, and not in that charming way he had before, this one had a more sinister look to it.

“Listen, I came over here because I was hoping you might be able to get me back off the planet,” First Aid took another step backwards, slowly raising his hands again. “I…I just need to get back to – “

“Nah, you’re coming with me now,” Knock Out reached forward with a grey hand, snatching First Aid by his right forearm, and started to drag him off. “We’re short on Medics on the Nemesis, and I need an assistant.”

“What!?” First Aid dug his heels in, but the bottoms of his peds only skidded and screeched across the planet’s metallic ground. “You work on the _Nemesis_!? With _Megatron_!? No! Wait! If you can just help me get to – “

“Would you rather I leave you here?” Knock Out quit tugging the smaller bot along for a moment, though he didn’t loosen his grip as he turned back to him. “Shipless, weaponless, without Energon or shelter or… _anything_ , really? You know, as desolate as this place looks, there’s still life forms out there,” Knock Out glanced off towards the horizon. “Predacons, scavenging off-world space pirates, Scraplets. I even heard a rumor there’s a Cybervore,” he turned, smirking back to First Aid.

“Tsk, Cybervores aren’t real!” Despite his words, First Aid’s internal databases were already tabulating his probability of survival if he remained on the planet without all the necessities Knock Out had pointed out, plus all the dangers he’d mentioned: 5% probability of survival. “A-Are they?”

“You wanna stick around to find out?”

First Aid signed, hanging his head in defeat, “No….”

“That’s what I thought,” Knock Out resumed his march back towards his own ship, which was, unfortunately, a good forty miles from their current location. He wanted to make a pit-stop at one more pile of corpses he’d passed along the way however, before taking off for the Nemesis. He didn’t mention this to First Aid, basing this decision on the smaller bot’s response to his previous handling of the dead frames they had only just left behind. A strange reaction for a Medic, Knock Out thought. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	2. A Storm

Once Knock Out was certain First Aid wasn’t going to attempt an escape (and yes, there was some irony in this, he realized), Knock Out released his grip on First Aid’s arm, not even bothering to glance back. If the bot tried anything, Knock Out knew he was substantially faster than the ambulance First Aid had claimed was his altmode. No worries there.

They walked in silence for several klicks, Knock Out leading the way with First Aid trailing behind, the latter sometimes breaking into a jog to keep up with his captor. Knock out had been running a search through his internal database for First Aid’s Designation. He was certain he’d heard it before, somewhere unrelated to the medical academy at Iacon.

“Wait...First Aid...,” Knock Out finally accessed the memory. He slowed his pace, so that he came alongside the other bot, who had, up until this point, been forced to take two steps for every one of Knock Out’s. “Now I know where I’ve heard your name before……Aren’t you a Combiner?”

“Errr…yes,” First Aid had been secretly hoping that wouldn’t be mentioned.

“Defensor…right?”

“Yes.”

“What part are you, again?”

First Aid sighed through his face mask, “The left arm.”

“That’s right….The ‘Protectobots’!” Knock Out laughed, swiping a hand through the air as though the title was displayed before them in flashing lights. “Well, I don’t see any of the others here with you, so I assume that’s not going well?”

“It’s going _fine_ , we just...got separated recently, that’s all,” First Aid muttered, and kicked at a pile of loose debris as they passed it by. 

“A touchy subject?” Knock Out asked, noting First Aid’s sudden sulk.

“No, I just...I just thought they would have come looking for me by now,” First Aid turned his blue and white visage skyward, as though he half expected the other four Combiners to suddenly drop out of orbit and save him.

“How did you get separated?”

First Aid sighed, turning his gaze back to the ground as they trudged on. “Well, we were on Luna 2 and…,” he paused, then glared to Knock Out as though he’d been somehow tricked into speaking. “…and never you mind, Decepticon!”

“Ohhh, okay,” Knock Out raised both hands, rolling his crimson optics. “Excuse me for asking too personal a question. Shame on me! Whatever might I do with such valuable information? Only Primus knows!”

“You’re not very nice.”

“Hah! No kidding!” Knock Out turned off their current path and headed towards a bombed out bunker. This was the location he had spotted in passing before. There were two dead frames halfway buried within the ruble that he wanted to examine before they returned to the ship. “This way, scrap-for-brains.”

“ _What_ did you call me? I’m smarter than you!” First Aid reluctantly followed.

“Probably,” Knock Out shrugged as he knelt amongst the dead bot frames to repeat on them the same process to remove their voltage regulators that he had completed on their fallen comrades.

“Yeah! I _am_! In fact…,” First Aid put his hands on his square hips and glared to Knock Out, who was now level with the smaller bot only because he was kneeling. “…in fact, when we get back to the Nemesis, _you’re_ gonna be _my_ assistant!”

Knock Out paused in his work, blinking for a moment at the thought of such a suggestion before he threw his head back and laughed and laughed, taking almost a full minute to compose himself before he wiped an Energon tear from his right optic and handed First Aid the now severed arm from one of the dead mechs that lay sprawled before them. “Of _course_ I will! Here, hold this.”

First Aid gave a look of fear and disgust as he took the arm, visibly cringing as he turned his face away from the body part. 

“You’re awfully squeamish for a Medic,” Knock Out observed as he removed the voltage regulator from the dead mech’s chest cavity and added it to his collection.

“I’m not squeamish! It’s because they’re already dead!”

“So, you’re afraid of dead frames?”

“No!”

“Sure seems that way.”

“It’s just…they’re dead…we should leave them alone.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, kiddo.”

“’Kiddo’? I’m older than you! By about a _million_ years, if my estimates are correct!” All of this was said to the empty space to First Aid’s right side, because to turn back to Knock Out would be to regain sight of the arm he was holding. “I’m smarter _and_ older!”

“Ohhh, hmm, this situation must be so _awkward_ for you, then!” Knock Out stared at First Aid with mock concern before he laughed again and rose back up to his full height. He scanned the horizon, then glanced skyward, his internal gauges measuring the humidity and air density. “There’s a storm coming. We should head back,” Knock Out had been aware of the gathering cloud cover for several hours, but he needed those voltage regulators, so he’d been pushing his luck. He stepped away from the debris and bot frames, “Just toss that servo, I don’t need it.”

First Aid gladly released the arm, though he did so gently, setting it back on the ground as though he might injure it if he had simply let it go. “Yet you made me hold it anyway!?”

“You’re going to have to get used to handling dead body parts if you want to be the Chief Medical Officer onboard the Nemesis,” Knock Out called back before his body suddenly shifted as he transformed, dropping into the sleek form of a red sports car. He revved his engines twice in rapid succession, a suggestion to First Aid that he transform as well. The smaller bot followed suit, transforming into his ambulance altmode and getting a head start on Knock Out, only because he knew the racecar would easily catch up to him.

Knock Out was beside and then ahead of First Aid within a matter of seconds, though he slowed his pace to keep within comm range. “Can’t you drive _any_ faster?”

“No!” First Aid was already struggling to keep up. “I’m not a fancy sports car like you!”

“That’s true, I _am_ fancy,” Knock Out slammed on his brakes then and flipped his gears into reverse, causing his tires to screech as he whipped his vehicle form around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, so that he was now facing First Aid, driving backwards and still managing to keep pace with the ambulance. “What’s your top speed? Forty miles per hour? Fifty-five, max?”

“Shut up! I’m going as fast as I can! I don’t wanna get stuck out here when the storm hits, either! What if it’s…,” the ambulance slowed at the thought that just crossed his memory platforms.

“…Acid rain…,” Knock Out then slowed as well, as a rain drop splashed down from the skies onto his hood. The velocity of the Aston Martin driving backwards sent the water droplet streaking down the hood and towards the headlights and front grille, leaving in its wake a pale, waxy scar across the red paint. Knock Out’s internal sensors went absolutely haywire at the minor damage. His finish!

“Exactly!” First Aid said.

“No, it IS acid rain! Drive! _Drive_!” Knock Out quickly corrected his direction, swerving hard and switching gears so that he was facing the correct position again before he floored his fuel pedal, instantly zipping away from First Aid in a cloud of burned rubber from his tires. Knock Out was a good fifty meters ahead when he realized that First Aid was lagging behind and nowhere near catching up to him. Cursing, he squealed his tires, swung himself in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn again, and headed back towards the ambulance, even as the volatile raindrops continued to patter down from the sky onto his vehicular form.

“First Aid!” Knock Out came up alongside him, slowing his speed significantly. “You have to hurr…Are you _slowing down_!? What are you _doing_!?” Yes, First Aid _was_ slowing down. Knock Out couldn’t believe it! “Hey! HEY! What the frag is your problem!? Are you insane!? We need to GO!”

“I-I c-can’t….I don’t….,” First Aid’s stumbled over his words, his vocalizer seemed to barely function as he attempted to respond. Knock Out didn’t know _what_ the hell to make of this, but he did know that they needed to go faster, immediately, or there was a real chance they might not make it out of the rainstorm alive.

“If you don’t get your aft in gear _right now_ , I’m leaving you out here to melt into a puddle! Do you hear me!?” Knock Out slowed and positioned himself directly behind the ambulance, which only decreased in speed more and more until it finally came to a complete stop. Knock Out thought he could hear First Aid trying to say something, but it only came out as an incoherent mumbling of sounds and static.

“Primus dammit, MOVE!” Knock Out risked his finish and rammed his front bumper into the back of the ambulance, which remained stationary despite Knock Out’s best efforts. He managed to raise First Aid’s back wheels off the ground for several seconds, Knock Out’s own tires squealing against the ground as he attempted to push the vehicle forward with minimal success. At best, First Aid’s front tires hopped a mere few inches from their original position, as though something was preventing them from rolling forward.

“Are you in _park_!?” Knock Out yelled to the other bot through the rain, which was now light but steady. The caustic water droplets etched pale streaks across the paint of each of the vehicles, marring the surface of their armor. “Did you just put yourself in park!?” Knock Out yelled again. “Put it in neutral! _Hey_! Have you gone deaf!? I _said_ ,” enough of this nonsense; Knock Out transformed back into his robot mode and reached for the door handle of the ambulance, “put…,” he stretched an arm into the cabin of the rescue vehicle, “...it….,” grabbed the tiny gear shift lever with his seemingly large hand, “…in…,” and yanked it back a few notches, “ _Neutral_!” He slammed the ambulance door shut and quickly transformed back into his altmode. “Now for frag’s sake, just hold a straight line, will you!?” Again, he slammed his front bumper under the back of the ambulance and began to push it forwards, his intended destination being a large overhang of permacrete and metal pylons from a fallen building about twenty-five meters away.

Upon closer inspection, the massive overhanging slab that had once been the outer wall of a habitation building did not offer as much shelter from the rain as Knock Out had originally anticipated. There was however, a small opening where the base of the slab met the ground. The collapsed building had created several crags and crevices, and it was there that Knock Out hoped to find some form of protection from the acid rain. Unfortunately, fitting into those cracks and crevices was another problem entirely. Knock Out managed to shove First Aid’s vehicular form under the overhang, but the rain, pushed forward by the increasing winds of the storm, still threatened their forms from behind.

“Slag,” Knock Out transformed, gripping the ambulance from behind and attempting to force it into the narrow opening under the overhang, but the vehicle’s shape made that nearly impossible. “Transform, or your fat aft won’t fit!” he yelled to the inert vehicle. “ _Transform, now_!”

Somehow, First Aid was able to comprehend and obey the command, transforming into a nearly-lifeless bot form within Knock Out’s grasp.

“Oh, NOW you wanna listen!” Knock Out snarled. “Gee, thanks! Thank you for your compliance, First Aid!” Knock Out shoved the smaller bot through the opening in the crumbling walls, then attempted to squeeze himself in as well, only to get stuck halfway through. He grimaced at the sounds of metal scraping permacrete as he slowly inched his way forward, marring his headlights and chest plates in his efforts to fit through. He finally stumbled through the small opening after First Aid, glaring at the scratches, not to mention the burns from the acid rain, which were visible across his entire frame by now. Primus, it was going to take weeks to buff this damage out!

Knock Out glared down to First Aid, who was occupying a tiny space within the too-small cave the fallen building’s walls created, his legs drawn up, arms wrapped around his knees. “You wanna explain what the _hell_ that was!? You could have gotten us _both_ killed!” Knock Out took a step forward, already ducking his head due to the low ceiling of the cavern. He clicked on his headlamps, the white light illuminating their sanctuary and First Aid’s huddled form. “Hey,” he snapped his fingers in front of First Aid’s face mask a few times.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! First Aid,” he stared at the unresponsive bot for a moment. First Aid’s visor was unreadable. He simply stared forward, hugging his knees to his chest, unmoving, unspeaking. “Hey, where did you go? … _Unbelievable_ ,” Knock Out sighed, shaking his head as he popped open yet another compartment along the side of his chassis. From this space he produced a large chamois (a little something he had picked up on his last trip to Earth). A synthetic fabric produced by humans, the blend of cotton and microfibers was perfect for soaking up water; yes, even acid rain. He gave his entire frame a rubdown with the cloth before he tossed it to First Aid. The large towel landed gracefully over the smaller mech’s boxy head, draping him in a curtain of damp, tan material.

“Here, at least get the water off of you before it ruins your…” Knock Out paused in his instructions as he watched First Aid grab the towel and begin to furiously wipe himself down with it, as though it would save his life. “…finish,” Knock Out concluded, watching First Aid’s frantic movements through wide optics. “You _do_ know that it’s not _real_ acid…right? I mean, it is, but it would take at least thirty klicks of constant downpour to eat a hole clear through your chassis and into your -”

“Please stop…Please stop talking about it,” First Aid finally spoke, his vocalizer a shaky warble.

“You’re _welcome_ , by the way!” Knock Out snapped back at him, his shoulders hunched as he braced a hand against the low ceiling. His form barely fit into the crevasse, which gave proof as to how small the space really was. Knock Out himself was not a big bot.

“…Thank you…,” First Aid whispered over the sounds of the rain, which had now grown into a literal typhoon.

“Still not going to offer up an explanation about what happened out there?”

“…I’m sorry…”

“You should be!”

“I am…I really am…”

“Now we’re stuck in here until the storm blows over,” Knock Out glared towards the outside environment for a moment before turning back towards their tiny sheltered space. He attempted to move forward, only to crack his helm against the low-hanging ceiling. “Ow! Damn, _fine_!” he muttered as he crouched down on his hands and knees, crawling forwards and wedging his form up against the floor and the slab that started at the ceiling and slanted downwards towards the ground in a sharp forty-five-degree angle. The only way they were both going to adequately share this space was if Knock Out assumed a nearly-fetal position against the far wall and the floor.

“You’re so afraid of the rain?” Knock out propped his head up in his right hand. “I find the sound rather soothing. I don’t even mind being out in it, unless it’s this kind of rain. Like I said, though, it’s not _real_ acid, but you know it can still melt your face off if you…” Knock Out had been staring out towards the storm as he spoke and had only just shifted his gaze back to First Aid, who had since retracted his mask and visor to rigorously wipe his face with the last patch of dry material on the cloth. Knock Out’s headlamps still shone bright enough to catch a glimpse of the Medic’s actual face, a sight that made the him gasp. “Oh my God, it _melted your face off_!?”

The lower half of First Aid’s face was, simply put, missing. The frame of his jaw and upper mandible still functioned, but the softer contouring metals of his protoform skin had been eaten away. Without the visor and mask, his scowl would have scared Sparklings.

“I see how you managed to fail ‘Berthside Manner’ now,” First Aid growled. He balled the towel up between his hands and tossed it aside in a fit of anger. “Get a good look?” First Aid was expecting the Decepticon to recoil in horror, especially after his initial outburst, so he was surprised when instead Knock Out propped himself back up and crawled closer, grabbing hold of First Aid’s jowls with his clawed fingers so quickly that he didn’t have time to pull away.

“No, I didn’t. Let me see,” Knock Out leaned so close, First Aid could see his optic magnifiers spin as they calibrated and refocused on his face. “But, this doesn’t look like it was done by acid rain.” In fact, he recognized the burn patterns. “This looks like…”

“...Hydrofluoric acid,” First Aid said awkwardly, as his jaw was still being held by Knock Out’s long fingers.

“Yes,” and Knock Out had a sneaking suspicion where it had come from. Highly corrosive, Hydrofluoric acid could eat through metal, glass, and all manner of organic life forms. Several sub-species of Insecticons had been known weaponize it, if they could manage to synthesize an internal storage tank and proboscis immune to the caustic liquid. Many died attempting to do so. There was one bot however, that Knock Out knew had mastered such a feat. He released his grip on First Aid’s face and shifted away to lay back down on the floor. “Airachnid?”

First Aid reactivated the visor and mask the second Knock Out had released him, though Knock Out could still sense that glare beneath the pale blue shade. “You mean Airachnid the _Decepticon_? Yeah, actually, it was.”

“Psh, she hasn’t allied herself with the Decepticons in nearly a decade, and don’t you give _me_ that look,” Knock out pointed a sharp finger towards the Autobot. “I hate her as much as you do. Maybe more,” he muttered the last words, his gaze shifting to the floor.

“It was my fault,” First Aid set the base of his chin on his kneecaps, looking smaller than ever. “I was being stupid. I was with the others on Phobos,” Knock Out could only assume that “the others” meant the other Combiners. “I got separated from them while we searching for,” First Aid paused, eyeing Knock Out for a moment before continuing on, “...for an Autobot distress beacon.”

“Aw, you fell for _that_ old gag?” Knock Out looked downright disappointed. “That’s the oldest trick in the book!”

“Yeah, well, we went anyway, okay? Because that’s what Protectobots do, we _help_ Autobots when they ask for it. I found the beacon, only that...that glitch,” First Aid almost spit the word out, and Knock Out could tell the bot wasn’t used to using such foul language. It was highly amusing, but Knock Out hid his smirk well. “....That glitch had rigged it with explosives. The initial explosion knocked my sensors offline, so I’d retracted the visor and faceplate…I don’t know why I thought that would help. Then suddenly she was just there, right in front of me, and then she got me with her stupid webbing and I couldn’t move and then I saw her open her mouth and—” First Aid was clearly traumatized. What had started out as reluctant storytelling had quickly dissolved into a tumble of words and emotions First Aid could barely keep in check. His red fingers were digging into his knees, and Knock Out thought he saw the smaller mech tremble ever-so-slightly. “It wasn’t that long ago, and I guess I just…”

“...Get flashbacks which render you completely immobile at the most inopportune moments?” Knock Out finished First Aid’s sentence for him, whether that’s what First Aid was about to say, or not. “Not to worry, I can totally fix this for you,” as though fixing the scars would magically make First Aid’s mental ailments disappear. “Not until we’re back on the Nemesis, of course, I don’t have any of my tools on my Starhopper, but ….”

“No, thank you,” First Aid returned the interruption, now eyeing Knock Out warily.

“What?” Knock Out blinked. “Why not? I’m actually _quite_ skilled in reconstructive surgery. Check your IMA records! Straight A’s!”

“I said ‘no’.”

“Why not?” Knock Out repeated. “Do you want to look like that for the rest of your life?” Primus, if it had been Knock Out’s face, he would have stopped the entire war to make sure it was fixed before they could all carry on again!

“Of course not!”

“So let me help you!”

“No! You’re _not_ a doctor _or_ a surgeon!”

“Oh, _I_ see how it is!” _There_ it was. “I’m not _good_ enough for you, is that it? _Fine_. Hide behind that mask forever, for all I care. Here I am offering my services, and you have the audacity to insult my professional expertise,” he scoffed, crossing his arms under his chin and settling down against the metallic floor, his wheels arched in annoyance as he glared away from First Aid. “Unbelievable.”

“You aren’t a professional! Professionals have degrees!” First Aid practically yelled back, not that he needed to in such a confined space.

“You’re rude!” Knock Out snapped back.

“No, YOU are!”

With startling speed, Knock Out sent a kick straight at First Aid, his ped slamming into the wall right beside the Medic, who yelped in fear, startled at the strike and the noise that was so loud in the small space it easily matched the roars of thunder outside. First Aid looked at the red and grey leg beside him, then slowly leaned away from it, noting that the infamous steel-belted radial tire that helped brace Knock Out’s armor to the frame of his protoform was almost as large as First Aid’s head.

Knock Out had intentionally missed, meaning only to shut First Aid up, and of course scare him a little, and he had managed to do both. He shut his headlamps off completely, leaving the cave in near-darkness, save for the small band of grey light that peeked in from the opening to the outside and the biolights that glowed from their two frames.

Two crimson circles glared at First Aid from the other side of the cavern. “Wake me when the rain stops.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	3. A Moment

The rain continued on well into the evening, the storm increasing in velocity and intensity. The war had left the surrounding landscape barren and weathered, and a lack of standing structures allowed for the winds to barrel across the planet’s surface like waves. The wind whipped the rain in giant sheets against the outer walls of the fallen habitation complex, sending water trickling down the ramparts to the ground, where a small pool was collecting and slowly edging its way through the opening and into their crawlspace. First Aid hadn’t stopped watching the puddle since he first became aware of its presence, and now it was about four meters from his left foot.

To First Aid’s right, Knock Out muttered in his sleep for what must have been the fifth time since he’d shut down for the duration of the storm. First Aid dared to glance away from the water seepage on the ground towards Knock Out, watching his limbs twitch in agitation. For the second time in as many hours, one such twitch sent his left leg jerking straight out again, his foot slamming squarely into the wall mere inches from where First Aid sat hunched down as small as he could make himself. It startled First Aid every time. At first, he thought Knock Out was just messing with him, but a quick scan of his systems told the Medic that yes, he was truly in sleepermode. How he didn’t wake himself up through such repeated violent acts, First Aid didn’t know.

Looking back to the stream of water and seeing that it had shifted another inch forward, First Aid decided he had to find some way of stopping the leakage now, before it was too late. A quick scan of the small confines of the crevice showed only chunks of rubble and other debris surrounding them, but that would have to suffice. As quietly as he could, First Aid leaned forward from his seated position, fingers scraping at the large hunks of permacrete and slowly rolling them closer to himself across the floor before he shoved them towards the opening, creating a small pile and, eventually, a barrier from one side of the entrance to the other. He was very careful not to touch the water, and mindful of any droplets that might attempt to fly over the barricade he was building as the wind continued to lash against the outer wall.

As a final failsafe, he stuffed the polishing cloth Knock Out had tossed him earlier into the bottom of the rocks, stuffing it into as many gaps and holes as it could fill before he ran out of fabric. Satisfied, he leaned back to survey his handiwork. That would hold, wouldn’t it? He flicked his gaze back to Knock Out, then to the barrier once more. What if it didn’t? What if he was destined to die in this Prime-forsaken cave, drowning in a pool of his own liquefied frame beside a Decepticon?

“Happy thoughts! Think happy thoughts!” First Aid cringed, burying his face in his hands as the old familiar fear crept up on him all over again. It was so ridiculous, he _knew_ it was ridiculous. Here he had just built a wonderful barrier to keep himself dry, which would _surely_ keep the rain out…..at least for a few more hours…..Right? Yet no amount of self-reassurance would calm his mind. 

Beside him, Knock Out’s engines suddenly revved, the noise a virtual roar within the confines of the small space they’d wedged themselves into. Momentarily startled from his attempt to compose himself, First Aid stared, wide-eyed behind his blue visor as he watched Knock Out’s left hand clench into a fist, his other hand flat against the ground beneath him until his pointed fingers clawed against the surface. The moment his engines went idle, First Aid could hear Knock Out’s consistent muttering had turned into a quiet moan of now distinct words.

“Sorry...sorry…I’m sorry...please…”

“Knock Out,” First Aid was afraid to say the other mech’s name too loudly. What if he startled him into an attack? “Knock Out…wake up!”

Outside, a sudden lightning flash preceded a gigantic thunderclap so loud that First Aid couldn’t help the audible yelp that emanated from his vocalizers. He turned his head towards the barrier and the impending threat of acid rain leaching through it, then back to Knock Out, who was apparently deep in his processor’s recall simulation. First Aid could see Knock Out’s denta plates clenched in a tight grimace of what First Aid could instantly recognize as pain, causing the Protectobot to feel immediate empathy. Deception or no, he just couldn’t handle seeing another sentient being suffer. Even a Decepticon. Even one that had been trying to kick him for hours.

“Knock Out…Hey!” First Aid leaned closer, whispering as loudly as he dared. “It’s only a false recall! Wake up!”

Knock Out suddenly gasped, platelets covering his vents along his lower chassis peeking open with the sharp intake of air and then lightly clattering closed again as it escaped back out through his mouth through whimpered apologies. “Sorry….Please…Don’t….Nononono…Please stop!”

First Aid was torn between the fear of melting in acid rain to his left and the nightmaring Decepticon to his right. His spark was hammering in his chest as he frantically looked from one to the other. His sense of empathy, however, eventually won out. Slowly, carefully, First Aid dared to reach a shaking hand towards the decaled finish of Knock Out’s left arm. He visibly cringed as his red fingers barely touched down on the pale purple pinstripes along the forearm. He was expecting to be struck in a nanosecond, and he shuttered his optics, just waiting for it to happen. “It’s...it’s okay....” he said, more for his own benefit than Knock Out’s.

As though First Aid had touched Knock Out with some sort of magic, the Decepticon went instantly still. The sudden quiet made First Aid open his optics and blink towards the other bot as he wondered if he had somehow managed to accidentally put him in stasis lock, but no, another quick scan proved Knock Out was still powered down. The tension with which Knock Out had been holding himself became obvious as now he relaxed, his entire frame seemed to sink closer to the ground, his claws no longer trying to cling to the floor beneath him.

First Aid watched this, holding a cycled vent in his chest before he slowly released the pressure. His relief was short-lived however, as another crack of lightening and accompanying thunderclap brought the reminders of acid rain back into his reality. He whipped his head around to check on the barrier, which was still holding, then turned back to his hand on Knock Out’s arm. Now that Knock Out was still, First Aid attempted to move further away from the opening, just a _little_ bit closer to Knock Out, to put as much distance from himself and the threat of the rain as possible.

He was carefully calculating the distance between the barrier and his current position when he was suddenly aware of a hand grasping his arm and tugging him off-balance. Knock Out, though still deep in sleepermode, had him in a vice-like grip. First Aid slowly started to pull away, but that only seemed to antagonize Knock Out, who responded by pulling back. In a matter of seconds, Knock Out had First Aid on the floor and pinned up against his red chest plates. First Aid was too terrified to struggle. He had wanted to get closer, but not _this_ close. He laid there for a few panicked moments, reviewing his possible options of escape when suddenly there was movement again. Knock Out had him by the arm and pulled him upwards along his frame as though First Aid were a blanket, only he tugged the Autobot up and right over onto the other side as Knock Out himself flipped over onto his left shoulder and hip.

Now First Aid was pinned between the steep incline of the falling ceiling and Knock Out’s form. The Decepticon crushed the smaller bot against him with both arms like a Sparkling would a favorite toy, his head bowed and pushed up against the back of First Aid’s high shoulder plates. A very quiet purr began to vibrate from one of Knock Out’s idling motors deep within his chest. First Aid lay as still as possible, wide-eyed and stunned at the very odd turn this situation had taken.

The Protectobot had been purposefully holding his electromagnetic field close to himself since he first encountered Knock Out hours ago. It was something he was never good at, despite all of his practice at it. First Aid was a bot that wore his emotions on his sleeve, so to speak. He was certain his overwhelming sense of empathy and sympathy for the ill and injured was a direct consequence of his inability to keep his EM field in check, but he just couldn’t help it. A part of him was embarrassed to be so in tune with other bots, yet another part was thankful he had the ability at all. He had seen bots without emotion or the capability to express emotions themselves. They were, in First Aid’s opinion, terrifying.

Slowly, First Aid released his EM field carefully outwards, trying to get a sense of Knock Out’s signatures. He was greeted by them immediately, yet where he had expected...what sort of emotion? He wasn’t even sure, but he had _not_ expected what he found: Peace. Contentment. Comfort. Primus, this was a Decepticon clinging to him, right? Did they really have all those sensations? 

First Aid stared at the wall an inch from his face, confused at the feelings he was picking up on, yet they were so strong that he found his own signatures naturally adjusting to the other’s tune. He had to convince himself that this was an okay thing to do. Why shouldn’t he be content? Despite this awkward arrangement, he was getting what he wanted: To put as much space as possible between himself and the acid rain. Even if the barrier broke, the water would reach Knock Out first, and that would surely awaken the other bot, alerting First Aid to the danger before it could affect him as well. Not only that, he was just now realizing how cold it had been near the entrance to the cave. Here, between the wall and Knock Out’s purring motors, it was a comfortable temperature. In fact, it was downright cozy.

Yes, this was, albeit an unusual setup, the best outcome First Aid could hope for. His previous fears and panic over the rain now abated, he found his optics slowly slipping closed. Whenever he had an “episode” such as he’d had out in the rain earlier, he always felt the urge for a long power down, as though becoming paralyzed with fear sucked his power cells dry. He didn’t want to offline in the arms of a Decepticon, but maybe just a few minutes wouldn’t hurt....

Knock Out was the first to wake up. His first thought as his processors rebooted back online was that he’d just had the best power down that he could remember. Yes, there had been the usual false recalls, but then there was this sudden tranquility, a sense of calmness and peace that he hadn’t felt in a vorn. It had been wonderful.

Slowly raising the shutters over his optics, he focused his vision across the cavern at the opposite wall, suddenly remembering _where_ he was. He flicked his gaze over to the opening of the shelter, making note of the newly created stack of rubble and the chamois fabric shoved at its base. Now he remembered _why_ he was there. But wait, wasn’t there also a “ _who_ ” in all of this? He gave a slow blink, looking first to the spot First Aid had been occupying against the wall earlier, then tilting his chin down as he realized the smaller mech was, in fact, right up against him, playing the little spoon to his bigger. This was definitely not what he had expected to wake up to. He had no recollection of how First Aid managed to get so close, and it was slightly unnerving. For one, the Autobot could have killed him in his sleep. Well, if it had been _any other_ Autobot, he could have killed him in his sleep. For two, the fact that _any_ living thing could sneak up on him and get this close without him realizing it meant that he was getting complacent, letting his guard down too much. This was not a luxury he could afford on the Nemesis. It would mean the death of him. Or worse.

Those thoughts that were now drifting back and forth through his processors had him unconsciously clenching a fist with his left hand against First Aid’s chest. He should be allowed a decent night’s power down in his own home, Primus dammit. He shouldn’t have to be hiding in a cave to feel safe from the world and every bot in it that wanted him dead or for some other purpose. And now that he was awake, he’d have to get up and go face that world and those bots again, and he didn’t want to, Primus, he just didn’t want to. Not yet. He perked his audials, catching the sounds of the rain outside. The storm seemed to have passed, but the rain persisted. Good. Five more minutes. He just wanted five more minutes of blissful, peaceful slumber. He could honestly care less that the Autobot was so close it was encroaching on his EM field. He just wanted some fragging sleep. He closed his optics and powered down again almost immediately. 

Knock Out was not the first to wake up. Sometime during the night, Knock Out had flipped back over onto his other side, dragging the Medic with him so that now First Aid was again facing the farther wall and the barrier. Since that moment, First Aid had been very much online, though his thoughts had him in an almost stasis-like state. He had been unable to convince himself to drop back into sleepermode, but his mind was at the same time not fully operational, the light of his optics completely off behind his visor as he drifted between a state of alertness and sleep. All of that changed when the jagged walls of their hiding place suddenly blossomed with a reddish glow. Oh slag, Knock Out was awake. First Aid remained motionless, silently watching the red glow track back and forth across the fortifications, pausing and briefly illuminating the barrier built across the opening. It had, thank Primus, managed to stop the water from entering their temporary sanctuary. The rain had not stopped yet, but the quiet drumming of droplets indicated that it had at least slowed.

The eerie crimson light vanished for about two klicks, plunging the cave back into darkness for just a moment as Knock Out shuttered his optics, probably refocusing his lenses, before the small area was illuminated once more. Now the glow was directed down towards First Aid. The smaller mech prepared for the worst. He wasn’t sure what Knock Out would do, but he was certain it would involve bodily harm.

First Aid had to internalize the squeak of fear his vocalizers responded with as the fingers of Knock Out’s left hand, the one that had been clutching First Aid’s form tightly up against his chassis for the past four hours, slowly curled inwards against his chest plates, making a fist over the Autobot badge in the center of First Aid’s chest. He could feel Knock Out’s frame go tense around him in a bristling shift of metal plates. He tried to pull his EM field inwards again, but their frames were literally up against each other, so it was damn near impossible. He felt the shift of Knock Out’s signatures slide from relaxation to irritability in a matter of nanoseconds. That sudden shift was followed by more still: Anger, disappointment, then oddly, defiance. 

To expose oneself to another bot’s electromagnetic field was not a means to reading their mind; it was simply a way to sense emotions from an otherwise mechanical being that lacked the proper facial structures and bodily gestures to articulate emotion. There had been many advances within their race over the past millions of years, so that now the ability to read an EM field was more of a holdover from the days that bots’ frames and faceplates were simple constructions incapable of any expression whatsoever. To First Aid, however, it was an invaluable tool into understanding another bot’s psyche.

First Aid felt Knock Out cycle a vent once and pause, holding the intake of air for a klick that seemed to last forever before an exhale left his upper ventilation systems, the larger bot’s frame suddenly yet slowly collapsing down again. The fingers of Knock Out’s left hand splayed outwards once more against his chest. First Aid could again feel the weight of the other’s arm draped over his lower torso as Knock Out settled back down into his previous position. A horizontal line of a shadow appeared towards the top of the red glow along the walls as Knock Out’s optics slowly began to shutter once more. There were a few moments of flickering crimson before the cave was again submerged in darkness.

The rain had carried on well into the morning before it finally petered out and stopped completely. Once he was certain the last raindrop had fallen, First Aid had carefully crawled away from Knock Out’s still form and began to tear away the barrier, one chunk at a time, until finally he cleared the passage enough that he was able to fit through. He stepped out into the sunlight, mindful of any puddles that had collected on the ground the night before as he surveyed the horizon. The sun’s rays were already burning off the remaining moisture in the air and on the planet’s metallic surface. Soon the only thing that would remain from the storm would be the thin layer of dust brought down in the center of each rain drop to coat the world with a thin layer of grime.

The sounds of First Aid moving the barrier had brought Knock Out back online, though he hadn’t moved or said as much, because he couldn’t be bothered to assist the other mech with the task. He waited until the opening was cleared and First Aid had stepped outside before he himself got back to his peds and was forced yet again to cram and scrape his chassis back out through the opening, twisting to shift one wheeled shoulder at a time through the tiny space. As he stepped out into the sunlight beside First Aid, he glanced down at his scratched and scared form and sighed. “ _Ruined_. Completely ruined.”

Neither bot mentioned the position they had woken up in. 

First Aid glanced from Knock Out to his own chest, surveying the damage on his white and red paint job. “It’s not so bad, I guess. Nothing that a little wax and a buff won’t fix.”

Knock Out suddenly froze, his back struts going rigid as he snapped to attention. “Yes, my Lord.”

“What?” First Aid blinked up at Knock Out. “I’m not your—” he started, but was shushed as Knock Out’s hand and sharp fingers suddenly spread in front of his face. He frowned at the gesture but turned his gaze from the hand back towards Knock Out’s face, watching it shift from a momentary look of panic to a smirk, his entire demeanor switching from fear to self-assurance just like that. It was then that he realized Knock Out was not speaking to him, but to an internal comm message he was receiving.

“My apologies, my Liege, I was caught in an acid rain storm overnight. The electrostatic buildup jammed the comms all evening. I’m only just now returning to the ship,” Knock Out finally removed his hand from its close proximity to First Aid’s face and started to walk.  


First Aid silently followed, catching a hint of tension as he trailed in the wake of Knock Out’s EM field.

“Yes, of course.....Earth? Certainly, my Lord. ......Yes....,” Knock Out carried on the conversation as they walked, his face mostly a blank stare, until his optics narrowed just a bit, though certainly enough for First Aid to take note. “...Yes, Master. I am yours to command.” Knock Out kept walking, silent for a moment as he closed his optics, then shook his head as though waking from a dream, and looked back down to First Aid. “We’ll be making a pit-stop on Earth before returning to the Nemesis.”

“Earth?” the Autobot perked up at the very mention of the blue planet. “Really? I’ve never been there!”

“Seriously?”

“Never! What’s it like? I heard most wide-spread native species are called ‘humans’. Is that true? Have you been there before?”

“Yes, many times. Yes, they are called humans, and Earth is like....,” Knock Out paused. How did one summarize what Earth was _like_? “...it’s like...well...you’ll see for yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	4. A Song

The longer the war dragged on, the more appreciation Knock Out gained for the vastness of space. It was peaceful out there on the fringes of the galaxy between Cyberton and Earth. Out there in his little Starhopper ship, though he was aware that his presence in the universe was minute, it was a good feeling, humbling in a way that filled his spark with gratitude that he was still alive. That was _not_ a feeling he ever got while onboard the gigantic ship that was the Nemesis, where the windows were so small and so sparse one could easily forget they were floating through the beauty of the cosmos.

The two Cybertronians had already been flying for twenty-six hours. After the first fifteen hours, Knock Out had finally put the ship in auto-pilot, locked all the comms and controls down so that First Aid would be unable to commandeer the ship, and left the helm to squeeze himself into the tiny sleeper quarters near the ship’s equally tiny holding bay. He’d left First Aid with one simple instruction:

“Don’t. Touch. _Anything_.”

Then he’d locked himself away in the small habitation suite that was barely big enough to fit the large recharge slab it contained. The window on the wall over slab wasn’t big, but it was large enough to give a spectacular view of the passing star fields. Knock Out sprawled across the slab, staring out the window as he was reminded, for the millionth time that he had laid down in this spot, that it was built for two. He’d kept meaning to pair it down, maybe try to cram a small desk into the extra space instead, but he never got around to it.

It did not take long for Knock Out to drift into another restless powerdown. The recalls that plagued his mind were of the generic variety, generic to Knock Out, at least. The only difference this time was that they did not last long, for he was suddenly jolted from sleepermode by.....what? He quickly sat up on the slab, audials straining to catch any oddities. All he could hear was the ship’s engines roaring below deck. Maybe it was the recall that startled him awake after all?

No, there it was. A deep, low vibration. * _Thoooooooooom_ * Completely out of synch with the rest of the sounds coming from the ship. * _Thooooom_ * There it was again. It was the same tone, but the pulse was shorter. * _Thooom Thooom Thoom Thoom_ * Now the pulse became a beat, repeating itself over and over in a rhythmical pattern.

Knock Out narrowed his optics as he swung his peds to the floor and marched out of the little room. He knew _exactly_ what that sound was.

 

First Aid had touched some things.

For the first hour Knock Out was off the bridge, First Aid was content to watch the stars out the bridge’s main viewport. He did enjoy space travel, though not very much when he was the only bot onboard. Space, for him, was lovely, but lonely. For the next two hours after that, First Aid had stretched himself across the floor below the navigation panels and powered down. He hadn’t had the chance to recharge since his ship had landed on Cybertron, and while his power cells weren’t quite at half-empty just yet, there was no sense in wasting the energy just to sit around and do nothing, so he might as well be conservative.

Upon reboot, First Aid was surprised to find that he was still alone on the bridge, though he wasn’t complaining. He stood from the floor and moved to one of the work stations off to the side of the helm, sitting on the stationary chair there and surveying the screens before him. He knew better than to attempt to override the protocols Knock Out had placed on the comms and the flight and navigation systems. Other databases on the ship however, had been left wide open.

Very slowly, First Aid placed one finger gently down on the touchscreen, wincing as he waited for some sort of electrical shock or alarm to be triggered. Nothing. The screen responded to his touch, a series of file catalogues quickly filling the display. He paused for a moment, leaning forward over the panel so that he could glance down the narrow corridor where Knock Out had disappeared, then turned back, skimming the catalogues and selecting to open one with another flick of his finger. Each catalogue was filled with files, millions and millions of files. All of it was in an alien language he did not recognize. The symbols and shapes that made up the dialect did not even remotely resemble Cybertronian or any other language First Aid had ever seen.

First Aid paused again in his investigation as a notification popped up on his internal feed, his system’s casual reminder that it he ought to consider consuming some Energon in the near future. He stood from the chair and quietly inched his way from the bridge and down the corridor in search of rations. Surely Knock Out had some stashed away somewhere.

The ship was not large, so First Aid had no trouble locating the single container of Energon wedged off into one corner of the holding bay. He quietly removed a single cube from the crate and tiptoed back to the bridge, pausing beside the locked hab suite only to confirm that Knock Out was still powered down. This was easy to determine, as after only a few klicks, Knock Out’s mumbling and pleading drifted through the thin panels of the closed door.

For an instant, First Aid felt sympathy well up inside of him, knowing another bot was suffering, but he quickly shook his head at himself and marched back onto the bridge. “Don’t be a pansy-aft!” he told himself aloud, plunking back into the chair and glaring at the path he’d just come from, as though it was all Knock Out’s fault that he cared.

First Aid pulled the cover on the Energon cube and took a quick swig, only to choke and nearly spit the cube’s contents out onto the touchscreen in front of him. He coughed and sputtered, wheezing as the potent liquid burned down his throat. This was not regular Energon. Making a face at the high-grade, he set the cube on the panel in front of the chair and pushed it as far away from him as he could without allowing it to tip off the edge. He could already feel his engines revving hard to process the stuff.

Still cringing at the taste that lingered on his glossa, the Autobot peered back down at the screen and all those files, choosing one at random with a finger. Another window popped open on the screen, prompting a program to open along with it. The program consisted of some sort of animation and image effects that First Aid had never seen before. He frowned, tapping a finger on the image a few times. For several seconds, there was nothing, then suddenly there was noise. A LOUD noise. Deep bass blasted out of all the comm speakers on the entire bridge, the heavy tones not strong enough to cause the ship to vibrate, but First Aid could certainly feel his frame rattle as he sat in the chair.

In a moment of panic, he slammed both hands down onto the screen, nearly knocking the cube of high-grade to the floor. Eyes wide, he tapped at the image on the screen as fast as his finger would move, trying one spot, then another and another before the noise finally silenced.

First Aid froze where he sat, watching the corridor expectantly. There was no way Knock Out hadn’t heard that. He waited several minutes, but to his great surprise, the Decepticon never surfaced. Blinking at his good fortune, he looked back to the screen, selecting a different file to open. The program ran this file the same as the other, though this time he was careful to watch were he put his finger down to make the noises start.

These noises were different, although the bass vibrations were just as prevalent, though not as drawn out as the first file. Also, there was some alien language being spoken that First Aid did not understand. He frowned, listening for a moment as he eyed the speakers in the ceiling. Were these some type of distress signals? If so, why were there so many of them? If they were, they were oddly melodic for an alien race in need of assistance. The longer he listed however, the more he found himself enjoying the noise. The sound had a peculiar way of conveying emotions from one moment to the next; First Aid wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not, but he liked it.

He turned back to the screen, finger centimeters from selecting another file when the sound of Knock Out’s voice roaring over the speaker noise startled him right out of the chair and onto his aft.

“What the _frag_ are you doing!?” Knock Our moved down the single step from the corridor to the bridge and marched over to the workstation, leering over the chair and First Aid cowering behind it as he tapped a pointed digit on the touchscreen, significantly reducing the volume of the noise so that it could barely be heard over the hum of the ship’s engines. “I thought I told you not to touch anything!”

“You...you did but I....got bored,” First Aid gave an innocent shrug.

Knock Out growled down at First Aid before he spotted the open cube of high-grade teetering on the edge of the workstation. He plucked the cube from its perch with his long fingers. “Bored _and_ drunk?” he snapped, before moving away, taking a long swig from the cube as he stepped towards the captain’s chair behind the helm.

“No! That stuff is disgusting!” First Aid made sure Knock Out was not feigning disinterest in striking him before he slowly rose back to his peds and reclaimed his seat in front of the screen.

“More for me then,” Knock Out shrugged a shoulder, standing before the helm and reviewing the data displays there for any changes, of which there were none. On the large display, he could also see the name of the song First Aid had randomly selected from the ship’s audio player: _I’ll Make Love To You_ – Boyz II Men. Ahh yes, he knew which file folder the smaller bot had found. He hadn’t played any songs from that file himself in, well....a long time.

Satisfied that First Aid had at least left the important controls alone, Knock Out draped himself into the seat at the helm, which was admittedly built for a bigger bot. He leaned back against one arm rest and kicked his legs over the other, crossing them at the knee, then scowled over the Energon cube to First Aid, who had watched this graceful process cautiously.

“Do you have any regular Energon?” First Aid dared to ask.

“Nope,” Knock Out took another long swig.

“Oh...Only high-grade?”

“Yup.”

“Oh...,” the sounds that still issued from the speakers drew First Aid’s attention back to the touch screen. “What uhh....what are all of these files? Is this a noise generator?”

“Psh, no, it’s Earth music.”

“Earth makes _music_?” First Aid couldn’t believe it. A planet that made its own music?

“Well, the _humans_ on Earth make music, yes,” Knock Out lowered the half-empty cube, clearly unfazed by the sharp taste of the liquid housed within it. He lifted a brow to First Aid. “How can you claim to be so smart and so old when you’re so naïve to the entire universe?”

“I’m naïve to the entire universe because I’ve never heard _Earth_ music?” First Aid gave him a look like this was hardly a qualifier for such a label.

“Precisely.”

“Then you should let me listen to more of it so I can become a respectable bot well-versed in all areas of the galaxy,” First Aid replied with a bit of an attitude.

“Be my guest, just don’t turn it up so fragging loud,” Knock Out scoffed, turning his head to stare out the wide window of the navigation portal that spread across the expanse of the bridge. “The triangle symbol makes it play, the square symbol makes it stop. You’ve already figured out the rest.”

“Why do you have so much of it?” First Aid turned his back to the screen again. “There are over eighty-eight _million_ files here!”

“It came with the ship,” Knock Out shrugged. “The software updates itself every time I land on Earth, and it adds new music. The humans never seem to stop making it, it’s kind of weird,” he took another pull from the cube.

“You bought a ship that came with eighty-eight million Earth music files downloaded into the hard drive?” First Aid turned to blink back at him.

Knock Out laughed, “I didn’t bu—” then paused, casually looking from the window back to First Aid. “I mean, _yes_! When I _bought_ the ship, the files came with it…They were umm...It was a free add-on.”

“Wow! Earth music!” Apparently satisfied with Knock Out’s answer, First Aid looked to the screen again. “It sounds so cool! It’s not like our music at all.”

“It’s mostly pointless drivel and nonsense,” Knock Out idly bounced his leg to whatever beat was playing over the speakers at that moment. “Plus, the humans have terrible vocalizers; so much of it is screechy and high-pitched.”

“Is this what all humans on Earth sound like?”

“Well, no. I mean, that’s their version of singing. All the tones they’re making, those are consistent throughout the planet, but the language they’re speaking in this song is called ‘English’.”

“Can you speak ‘English’?”

“Yes, it’s quite simplistic, actually.”

“Are there other languages on Earth?”

“Yes, the humans have utilized nearly seven-thousand languages during their existence,” Knock Out eyed the cube in his servo, tilting the remaining liquid back and forth.

“Really!? How do they understand one another? Is there one language they can all understand, or do they all wander around not being able to communicate with one another?” First Aid asked every question that his processor produced the second it produced it.

“No, it’s not like that at all. See, there are different countries and…Ugh,” Knock Out waved a hand at him, “I’m not explaining all of this to you. Once we enter the Earth’s atmosphere you’ll be able to access the humans’ _World Wide Web_ and you can look up whatever you want about them.”

“The ‘World Wide Web’? What’s _that_?”

“It’s their planet’s computer database. Like Vector Sigma only...not nearly as impressive. The humans call it ‘the Internet’.”

“Fascinating!”

“Hmmm, I suppose,” Knock Out rolled his optics. He would never consider Earth to be boring, but all of this was old news to him.

“Okay, let’s see what else is in here,” First Aid had always been quick to learn, and after a few more minutes playing with the controls, he was able to pull up another file folder, play another track, and increase the volume ever-so-slightly. He canted his head to the side so that one audial was pointed up towards the speakers in the ceiling, and listened for a moment before finally asking, “What are they saying in this song?”

Knock Out had glanced back to the streaming star fields as the ship carried on, but now he leaned forward in the chair a bit to eye the English words scrolling across the screen. He didn’t recognize the song. It must have been one of the newer ones that had automatically downloaded into the ship’s databanks the last time he was on Earth. The words _Despacito_ \-- Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee slowly inched their way across the bottom of the monitor.

“Well,” Knock Out began, listening for a moment before the language finally clicked in his processors, “this song isn’t in English, it’s in Spanish,” he gave a quick glance to First Aid before the bot could interject with the obvious question, “another Earth language. I’m not as well-versed in Spanish, so I might miss a few words.” First Aid watched Knock Out’s red optics flick back and forth as he processed the music for translation. “There’s a human…he wants to interface with another human, but slowly…*Ahem*,” Knock Out cleared his vocalizer, not to sing along, but to translate the music word for word. “’I want to breathe in your neck slowly….I want to undress you in kisses slowly…..Let me… _trespass_ your _danger zones_ ….until I make you scream’? Ooo la la!” he perked a brow to First Aid and laughed at the lyrics. “Human interfacing sounds intense! What?”

Knock Out blinked as he watched First Aid slowly sink in the chair a little, quickly looking away as he wrung his hands together. The smaller bot’s visor and facemask made it more difficult to get visual confirmation of his emotional state, so Knock Out purposefully reached out with his EM field, not having to push it very far to pick up on the Autobot’s signature. He smirked at what he found there.

“Do the words _embarrass_ you?”

“No!” First Aid snapped his head back to the other mech defiantly, though the look did not last long. “They’re just...I mean…”

“First Aid, did you think we were the only species that interfaced? You’re a doctor, for Prime’s sake! Interfacing is a purely natural function. So what if the humans want to sing about it in their music?” Knock Out shrugged, and finally drained the Energon cube.

“’ _It_ ’ is not a routine _mech_ function required for maintaining standard operational performance levels!” First Aid crossed his arms and turned back to the workstation monitor, already looking for another song to play.

“Says you,” Knock Out narrowed his gaze to the Autobot, grinning even more. “You can’t even _say_ the _word_ , can you? Hah! Go on, say it. ‘Interfacing’, OoOooo!” he waggled his clawed fingers to First Aid. “Say it, or I’ll kick you out of the airlock.”

First Aid took a deep vent, holding it in with a long pause before he released it, muttering very, very quietly, “Interfacing,” looking for all of Cyberton like it pained him to do so.

This apparently agonizing act by First Aid made Knock Out laugh out loud. He buried his face in a hand, his flared shoulder plates shaking as he cracked up behind his fingers. “Oh Primus, you’re such a prude!” He finally glanced back up, still chuckling as he held his hand up to First Aid. “Listen, listen! You’re going to have to get used to hearing words a lot worse than THAT if you’re going to….. Wait a klick,” his smirk dropped as a new probability found its way into his processor. “ _Now_ I see,” and the smirk returned as he pointed to First Aid again. “It’s because you _never have_!”

“What?” First Aid replied, attempting to act as innocent to the topic as possible.

“You’ve never interfaced!”

“That’s…not….true!” First Aid struggled to respond. “I….I mean….yes I have! Not that it’s any of YOUR business!”

“No you haven’t, look at you. This whole conversation has you on edge. And you’re a horrible liar. There’s _another_ thing you’re going to _really_ have to work on,” Knock Out laughed again before standing from the captain’s chair and sauntering his way past First Aid and the work station to grab himself another cube of high-grade.

First Aid was on guard the second Knock Out rose from his chair, and he watched Knock Out cautiously as he moved off the bridge and disappeared down the hallway momentarily. “So what if I haven’t...,” he muttered to himself when he thought he was out of audial-shot, glaring at the screen as he swiped for another song.

“Well, my frag-free friend,” Knock Out was quickly to return. He paused on the step from the corridor to the bridge, peeling back the lid on the high-grade and leaning his side up against the wall as he took a swig from the cube. “I’d offer to be your first,” this caused First Aid to squirm under Knock Out’s analyzing gaze, “but you’re _really_ not my type. Not to mention the size difference. I mean, you’re no minibot, but I’d probably end up crushing you. Unless you took top. I could make that work,” Knock Out tapped a claw against his chin, pondering the possibilities.

“Knock Out! NO!” First Aid looked horrified, and Knock Out could sense the fear in his EM field, even from his spot on the stair.

“Tsk, I’m only _kidding_!” Knock Out rolled his optics as he returned to the captain’s chair, purposefully giving First Aid a wide berth so he didn’t have a sparkattack. “Cool your exhaust ports.”

“It’s none of your business!” First Aid shot back as Knock Out resumed his seat.

“ _Fiiiiine_ , fine. I won’t mention it again, you puritan.”

“What’d you just call me!?”

“Look it up when we get to Earth.”

First Aid grumbled to himself, hitting play on another song and huffing a vent as he released it. Decepticons were so mean. Primus, was nothing sacred to them!? He tried to focus back on the music, and was quickly pleased by his most recent selection. The human doing the singing seemed very enthusiastic and proud. Its voice reminded First Aid of a word he’d once heard Rodimus Prime use: “Epic”.

“This one is good,” First Aid looked back to Knock Out, who First Aid decided _was_ actually kidding about what he’d said a moment earlier. “What’s this called?”

“This is ‘Rock and Roll’,” Knock Out said between sips from his second cube.

“What’s that noise that isn’t the human singing?”

“It’s an instrument called a ‘guitar’.”

“Gee-tarrr,” First Aid said, trying it out in English. “Guitaaarr…I like the guitar.”

“Good for you. Wait a minute, I’ve heard this song before,” Knock Out peered down at the data screen to watch the title scroll by: _The Touch_ —Stan Bush.

“You have? When?”

“Yes,” Knock Out didn’t recognize the name of the song, but he’d definitely heard the tune, several times. “Bumblebee. That fragger blasts this from the radio in his altmode every time the Autobots attack us,” he rolled his optics. “That ‘Bot’s taste in Earth music is embarrassing. There are better songs than _this_ with a guitar in them. Change it.”

“Fine,” First Aid grumbled, opening another folder and selecting a random file. This piece of music was quite unlike the others they’d heard. The bass still rolled throughout the tiny cabin of the ship, but the Autobot noted how smooth the sounds were; it was definitely not a human voice. He watched Knock Out from the corner of his optic as the bot checked the helm’s screen again. “What kind of song is _this_?”

“Hmm, good choice. This is what the humans call ‘Classical’. See how nice it is? No screechy human vocalizers, no words, just the nice instruments making their sounds. And it’s so complex; there are so many layers to it all. Can you hear them?” Knock Out turned his head to the side, looking genuinely surprised at what his audials were picking up. “ _Humans_ made this one? Are you sure?” he peered down at the scrolling text: _Jupiter_ – Gustav Holst. “This seems well beyond their intellectual capabilities. I mean, do they even realize the mathematical properties that are intertwined in this?” he scoffed at the very idea and sipped at his Energon cube again, “Doubtful.”

First Aid was glad when Knock Out finally shut up and he was able to appreciate the song in silence. The music seemed to captivate them both for a time, each bot quickly lost in his own processors. Both stared out of the bridge’s main viewport, though Knock Out stole a glance at First Aid while he polished off the rest of the high-grade. Primus, what the hell was he going to do with this Medic? The more he learned about the Autobot, the more obvious it was becoming that the Nemesis would be his death sentence. Knock Out was unsure why he cared in the first place that the smaller bot lived or not, but the thought of bringing First Aid aboard the Decepticon ship brought about a feeling within him that he generally tried to avoid: Guilt.

Knock Out set the empty cube beside the other as he finally put his peds back on the floor, frowning over the data monitor at the helm. He mulled over his options of whether to keep First Aid or.....do something else with him. The question was what, and if so, how? He pressed his full right hand onto the screen, the sensitive display scanning over his palm and fingers while simultaneously picking up on his energy signatures. Once confirmed, another window popped up, and he tapped in a lengthy string of code. All of this amounted to the controls finally unlocking, so that he could disengage the autopilot.

First Aid had been covertly watching all of this since he first saw Knock Out move, though he was too far away to catch any characters that the other bot used in his password, plus the song had ended, and he was more interested in hearing more Earth music while he had the opportunity. He turned to the workstation again and selected another song, smiling behind his mask when he recognized the instrument being played.  
“It’s another ‘gee-tar’! Is this also ‘Rock and Roll’?”

Knock Out pulled his gaze away from the ship’s coordinates to glance down at the scrolling script at the bottom of the screen, his optics going wide for a moment at the title: Cruise—Florida Georgia Line. He quickly cleared his vocalizer and turned his gaze to the navigation systems. “No, that’s ‘Country’, and I’m done answering your questions now. I told you, just wait until we get to Earth and then you can have every ridiculous question you have about the humans and their instruments answered by their internet, which will be soon enough,” he gave a questioning look to First Aid. “You do know how ships function, yes?”

“Of _course_ , Knock Out! I DID fly to Cyberton _by myself_!” The Autobot looked insulted.

“Good for you. Go open the microfilament compressor in the engine room and make sure the neogenic spinner is seated correctly in the ion conduit. Breaking through the Earth’s atmosphere can get a bit…bumpy…sometimes, and if the spinner isn’t seated right, we’ll break up into a thousand pieces before we hit the Mesosphere.”

“No problem,” First Aid slid from the stationary chair at the workstation and stared for the corridor, pausing when Knock Out called back to him.  
“And grab me another cube!”

“ _Fine_!” First Aid rolled his optics, muttering under a vent as he stepped up into the corridor and headed for the engine room, “Jerk.”

Knock Out busied himself at the controls until he was sure First Aid had left bridge, pausing only once he was sure the other bot was halfway across the ship. His gaze again found the scrolling title of the song at the bottom of the screen, and he glared for a moment at the fact that the Autobot had somehow managed to randomly select the folder labeled, in English, “Breakdown’s Mix”. Knock Out had honestly forgotten the file existed, and now several memories he’d worked hard to keep from his processors were suddenly flooding through it with the tune and words of the song.

Much to Knock Out’s irritation, Breakdown had taken a liking to country music the moment they’d first been exposed to the humans’ radio wavelengths that they had been able to pick up on their transponders. Knock Out found country music simplistic and the lyrics repetitive from one song to the next, but Breakdown thought it was the most romantic form of music the humans had ever created.

Still, Knock Out couldn’t help but smirk to himself as he recalled the first time he’d heard this song in particular. It had been one of those rare occasions they had the entire Nemesis all to themselves, save the Vehicons, of course. But the Vehicons weren’t going to tell Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, or anyone else that Knock Out and Breakdown liked to blast Earth music through the ship’s comm system whenever the opportunity allowed for it. Truthfully, the Vehicons actually enjoyed it as much as the other two did. It was days like these that Knock Out, Breakdown, and the “lesser” Decepticons shared a secret bond over Earth music and the absence of their tyrannical Master.

Before his departure, Megatron had ordered his medic and the medic’s assistant to clear out one of the cargo bays to make room for what would eventually become the storage space for the Iacon relics. Knock Out had started to protest, “We’re Medics, not Quartermasters!” but Breakdown was quick to correct him in front of their Lord, and thus they’d found themselves in a bay full of junk. A lot of stuff had accumulated in that cargo bay over the centuries of years the Nemesis had been operational, so Breakdown had taken it upon himself to do the heavy lifting, while Knock Out was in charge of cataloging inventory.

The two bots were three hours deep into their task when Cruise could be heard drifting through the speakers. Knock Out immediately rolled his optics at the ridiculous country music as images of Earth, cows, corn fields, and muddy dirt roads came to his processors. Breakdown, with those same images in mind, was instantly uplifted by the song, fueled by the music to work even harder and faster. He couldn’t help but sing along, giving a smirk to Knock Out every few lines or so as he grabbed one crate of supplies at a time and hauled them from one side of the bay to the other. Knock Out was hardly surprised that the former Wrecker knew all of the lyrics to the ridiculous song.

Breakdown eventually made his way closer to Knock Out as he worked, so that with the final iteration of the chorus, he was able to serenade him. Knock Out tried to remain annoyed by the song, but he could not refrain from smirking with amusement at the scene playing out before him:  
“Baby you a song/ You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise/ Down a back road blowin’ Stop signs through the middle/Every little farm town with you/ In this brand new Chevy with a lift kit/ It’d look a hell lot better with you up in it/ So baby you a song/ You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise.”

Knock Out hadn’t realized he was singing along with the music as it crooned out of the speakers above his head until First Aid returned to the bridge and was shoving a high-grade Energon cube at him.

“Okay, I checked the neogenic spinner and it’s all set in the…Are you _singing_?”

“What?” Knock Out blinked out of his reverie, quickly frowning as reality set in, and he snatched the cube from First Aid’s hand. “ _No_!”

“Yes, you were! You can sing! I heard it!”

“Frag off,” Knock Out growled, popping the cube open and quickly taking a long chug.

“How are you gonna pilot this ship if you’re drunk?”

“It takes _way_ more than three cubes to get me drunk, oh vestal Autobot.”

“I am not _vestal_!” First Aid glared to Knock Out before stalking back to the chair at the workstation and slumping down into it as though he was forced to be there. In a sense, he was.

“Oh please, yes you are. You all are, all of you Autobots,” Knock Out dismissed him with a wave of a hand.

First Aid eyed Knock Out for several seconds before he was finally the one to toss his head back and laugh and laugh, an act that made Knock Out blink in surprise. “By the Allspark, Knock Out, _now_ who’s so naïve?”

Knock Out was suddenly watching First Aid as though the bot might actually worth something, as though he had some valuable information. “What do you mean?”

First Aid shook his head. “Come on, Knock Out. Four million years of war, you think Autobots don’t get around? You think we don’t like to toss a few back once in a while and let loose?”

“Hmmm. So, you’re an interface virgin, but familiar with the other stuff, eh? You like to get a little tipsy and make out in some back room with some bot? Which bot was it, then?”

“I’ll never tell,” First Aid crossed his arms over his chest, looking smug.

“That’s fine,” Knock Out engaged the ship’s piloting systems, causing the base of the data screen in front of him to rise up from the floorboards around his peds, the touchscreen moving in tandem with the navigation port that descended from the ceiling. A bigger bot could have remained seated to simultaneously set the trajectory path and enter the coordinates but Knock Out was forced to stand. “I’ve got a Quantum Jump and seventy-six hours to guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	5. A Choice

Since Knock Out couldn’t leave his ship on Cybertron, he had to fly it off the planet, and since the ship was too big to fit through the Spacebridge Soundwave was so capable of producing for the Decepticon troops, Knock Out and First Aid had been forced to travel to Earth the “long way”, meaning a series of Quantum Jumps and many, many hours of space flight in between.

Despite the occasional course corrections and initiation of the Quantum Jumps by Knock Out, his interactions with First Aid over Earth music, and their constant sniping at one another, the two mechs spent most of the time on opposite ends of the shuttle, powered down to conserve Energon and power cells. It was in the moments before these space naps that Knock Out finally decided what he was going to do with the other Medic.

Breaking through the Earth’s atmosphere was in fact as nerve-wracking an experience as Knock Out had predicted. The small ship, which was getting on in years, rattled with vibrations so intense that First Aid’s entire frame went numb for several seconds while the tremors distorted his vision, so that the entire bridge became a blur of grey shapes and flashing warning screens. The noisy clattering of his armor plates was outdone only by Knock Out’s. First Aid clung to the arm rests of his chair as though his life depended on it, which it basically did, since the restraints for the seat had been ripped out long ago. Apparently Decepticons thought safety precautions were for suckers.

The ship lurched, appeared to stall and then reignite its engines all in a matter of seconds. This happened multiple times as they descended. First Aid watched Knock Out literally fight with the yoke of the ship’s steering column, clearly putting all his strength into keeping the aircraft steady as the ship dropped more than flew towards the Earth. Once they reached the Troposphere, however, Knock Out managed to regain full control over the spacecraft and provide a comparatively smooth landing.

After Knock Out hand landed the ship and powered it down to standby, he finally moved from the captain’s chair, giving the helm a gentle pat with a hand as he stepped aside. “Atta girl, I knew you could do it.”

“This ship is a flying piece of _garbage_!” First Aid yelled from his hiding spot, wedged between the stationary chair and the workstation. “We could have been _killed_!”

“Shhh! Don’t you say that about her, she’ll hear you!” Knock Out glared down to the floor where First Aid still huddled. He reached down at grabbed First Aid by the arm, hauling him out and back onto his peds. “For that, you get a time out.” He dragged the smaller bot behind him, across the bridge and up the step into the narrow corridor.

“Let me go! What’s a ‘time out’? Get your servos _off_ me!” First Aid struggled, but not much. This was not the first time Knock Out had mech-handled him into following along, and his first experience with that when he’d tried to escape Knock Out’s grip on Cybertron had gotten him nowhere. There was no sense in fighting back. Yet.

Knock Out swung open the panel of a storage space halfway between the bridge and the holding bay, and it was into this space that he shoved First Aid. The glow of the Autobot’s blue visor lit up the tiny compartment as he looked to Knock Out. “Are you serious!? You’re gonna lock me in here!? We just landed!”

“I want you to stay in here and think about what you said, and how it might have hurt Mercy’s feelings,” Knock Out said with a smirk like this might all be a joke, yet he seemed to be quite serious about locking First Aid in the closet.

“’Mercy’? You named the ship—HEY!” First Aid pounded a hand on the panel as Knock Out slammed it shut. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry!”

“If you get bored, turn your sensors on. You can access Earth’s internet wirelessly. They have firewalls, but they’re a joke, so don’t worry about them,” Knock Out spoke to the closed panel before he strolled back to the bridge, heading straight for the comm station.

 

The pinging signal of Knock Out’s ship touching down on Earth drew Soundwave’s attention from the control panel spread out before him at his station on the bridge of the Nemesis. His delicate fingers slowly tapped at the keys, bringing the image of a topographical map of the Earth onscreen. He stared, motionless, at the screen for several seconds before slowly turning to Megatron, who stood nearby, busy with his own work at another post along the bridge.

“Decepticon insubordination,” Megatron heard the recording of his own voice from across the bridge, and he narrowed his gaze at the words as he turned and moved to stand beside Soundwave, his red optics scanning the map. Soundwave lifted a hand, pointing a slender digit at the Energon mine icon that represented the location where Knock Out was supposed to have landed. He then trailed his finger across the map to the glowing purple Decepticon badge that was an entire continent away. Right beside the purple badge was an Autobot badge, pulsing red.

Megatron curled his fanged mouth in a snarl. “Send Laserbreak. Perhaps it is time you give her prototype cloaking device a test run.”

 

“Optimus, we’re getting an energy spike over Siberia,” Ratchet looked over the data readouts that were scrolling across the screen of the comm system situated deep within the rock formations outside Jasper, Nevada. “It appears to be a ship of Autobot origin.”

“I recognize that ship’s specifications,” Optimus Prime moved slowly to stand beside Ratchet, blue optics staring at the screen. “A Starhopper, S-Class.” Beside Optimus, a whirling tone exclaimed several meters below him. He looked down, giving a nod down to the bot that stood beside him, barely as high as his elbow. “Yes, Bumblebee. That ship belongs to Jazz.”

 “Hang on, now we’re receiving a high-frequency signal,” Ratchet tapped a finger on the control panel, bringing up the screen. “There’s an embedded message…it’s from _Knock Out_?”

“What does _he_ want?” Smokescreen growled, having gathered around the comm station as well. He glared at the archive image of the Decepticon in question that was displayed on the screen.

Ratchet raised a brow to the message, reading it aloud. “’Found something you might want. Looking to trade. Bring Phase Shifter’. He’s included some coordinates.”

“Aw, _MAN_!” Smokescreen, who would have worn the requested Iacon relic on his wrist every day if Optimus Prime had let him, quickly looked to said Prime. “We’re not _really_ gonna trade him whatever he has for the Phase Shifter, are we!?”

Bumblebee nudged Smokescreen with an elbow, narrowing his blue optics as his vocalizer chirped and carried on.

“Of _course_ it’s worth trading for Jazz!” Not that he knew who Jazz was, but all the same, Smokescreen quickly held up both servos to Bumblebee. “But what if it’s a trap?”

 “Isn’t it _always_ a trap with the Decepticons?” Jack piped up from his spot on the catwalk overlooking Ratchet’s work area.

“Pretty much,” Arcee, who was sitting on a stack of crates below Jack, simply shrugged as she replied to the question.

“Let me see if I can pick up any other energy signals in the area,” Ratchet tapped his fingers along the panel, watching a dot along the screen ping back and forth before the dot split into two circles. Inside one circle glowed a purple Decepticon badge, and inside the other glowed the red icon of an Autobot symbol. “Looks like it’s just them,” Ratchet glanced back and up to Optimus, awaiting his decision.

Barely a nanoklick went by before Optimus spoke. “Smokescreen, procure the Phase Shifter from storage.”

“Awwww!” the young bot threw his hands in the air and stalked away to collect the relic. He knew he had to follow Optimus’s orders, but he did not have to follow them without complaint.

“All of you, with me,” Optimus spoke again once Smokescreen had returned with the Phase Shifter, looking as sullen as if he were being forced to give away his own Sparkling. “Ratchet, open the Groundbridge, but standby for a quick escape, if necessary.”

Ratchet gave a nod, moving to the Groundbridge controls and typing in the coordinates Knock Out had provided. He and Jack watched together as the glow of aqua and green light filled the hollow chamber, and Optimus and the others disappeared through its hazy aura.

 

Knock Out knew he was taking a huge risk by not landing near the Energon mine Megatron had ordered him to stop at, but he also knew that the Nemesis was a busy ship, and there was just as big of a chance that his landing would go unnoticed. Besides, he had landed on Earth at random locations plenty of times before, and recently. There was no reason anyone should be monitoring his movements; he’d been a good bot lately.

After locking First Aid in the closet, he had sent the high-frequency signal out to the last-known Autobot receiver channel in his ship’s data logs. It had taken several minutes of pinging before the message finally went through. He didn’t wait for a response. He knew they would come.

 Knock Out went back to the corridor and unlocked the panel to the storage closet, smirking to First Aid. “Have you thought about what you said?”

First Aid blinked up to Knock Out as the panel was finally opened. The whole of the internet was flashing across the internal feed of his visor. He was so enthralled with the information that he almost hadn’t realized Knock Out had returned. “What? Oh. Sure, I guess. Knock Out, did you know that the humans –“

“Yes, yes, I know all about them. Come on,” there was no time to waste. Knock Out snagged First Aid by the arm again and quickly ushered him outside once the ship’s bay door had finally inched its way to the ground and stood open. First Aid paused in his internet scanning to refocus his optics on the expansive landscape that greeted them: To the left, lush, green meadows dotted with tiny purple flowers; to the right, a dense copse of vegetation gave way to tall evergreens and beyond that, mountain peaks barely dotted with snowcaps. First Aid had seen photos of Earth before, but they had in no way conveyed the reality of Earth’s beauty.

“Whoa,” was all he could say, his optics wide behind his visor.

“It’s lovely now, but it’s the absolute Pit here in the winter time. Let’s go,” Knock Out led First Aid away from the ship and towards the tree line, now giving paranoid glances up and around towards the sky. He was worried the Nemesis might have noted his presence here and was equally worried the Autobots might get the jump on him as well, if he wasn’t careful. The coordinates he had sent them were approximately a mile from where he had landed the ship, but deep in the forest. No one would be able to see his ship from there, as the pine trees stood taller than even Optimus Prime’s head.

“This is amazing!” First Aid exclaimed as they walked, “What are those? And what’s that? Why does this organic material feel like—”

“Ask the internet, it will tell you,” Knock Out said, although he realized that First Aid might not get a very good signal in their current location. Oh well. Knock Out didn’t have the time or inclination to play Earth host. He even released First Aid’s arm once they were deep into the forest, as the tree trunks became too close together for two bots to pass by at the same time, plus he knew First Aid was far too preoccupied to notice his paranoia, and the smaller bot certainly wasn’t going to attempt an escape.

When they finally reached the small clearing Knock Out had selected, that paranoia rose a notch, as the Autobots were nowhere in sight. Damn, what if they actually _didn’t_ show up for a change? He had no plan B to offload First Aid somewhere else. He slowly glanced back to the smaller bot, who was busy staring up into the branches of one of the tall pines, one red and white hand placed on the moss-covered trunk of the tree as he watched the needle-covered branches sway in the wind. Knock Out swore he could see the bot’s look of utter awe and wonder, even behind the visor and mask. First Aid was the picture of innocence.

Knock Out quickly looked away, placing his own hand on a nearby tree while he brought the other to his head. Slag, why was this so hard? He had brought enemy captives onto the Nemesis before. He had watched, smiling, while other Decepticons had threatened them with torture, and then he had still stood there and watched when the threats were not enough and so the promise of it was made good. And when the other Decepticons’ methods yielded no information from their captive, Knock Out had often stepped in to continue the process with his own approach and procedures to gleaning information. And Silas. The many, _many_ things he had done to Silas, that despicable human that had melded itself with Breakdown’s corpse. Yes, Knock Out was quite capable of inflicting pain and suffering himself and occasionally, he even enjoyed doing it.

But this mech, First Aid, Knock Out couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him tortured and corrupted at the hands of Megatron and the others. Maybe it was because the bot was a Medic like himself, even if the Autobot did not seem them as equals in that regard. Maybe it was because Knock Out had already dragged one former Autobot onto the Decepticon’s side in the past, and that had turned out so horribly wrong in the end. Guilt slowly wound its tendrils through Knock Out’s systems and he winced as another string of memories slipped through his processor. If not for the sudden sound of the Groundbridge opening that startled him out of the processing sequence, he was not sure how far down that rabbit hole he would have gone.

The second the portal opened in the clearing, the wince was wiped from Knock Out’s faceplate and instantly replaced by his signature smirk. He leaned over from where he stood, grabbing ahold of First Aid again and pulling him over to stand front of him. His grip, First Aid noted, was much firmer this time around.

“ _Well,_ well,” Knock Out watched as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Arcee and Smokescreen all stepped out of the glowing portal, weapons drawn except for Optimus. “The gang’s all here, I see. You’re a lot harder to get ahold of when I actually _want_ to be found. Why is that?”

First Aid, completely clueless to the situation, only stared at the other bots as they revealed themselves. He knew who they were, he just could not believe they were actually there.

“Yer lookin’ a little dull there, Knock Out,” Bulkhead grinned, optics flicking over Knock Out’s form, which he knew would set the Decepticon off.

True to Bulkhead’s assumption, Knock Out grit his denta, optics narrowed to the gigantic Wrecker. He had attempted to give his armor a buffing before one of his powerdowns on the flight over, but the damage caused by the acid rain was a tad deeper than his ‘travel buffer’ could fix. “Don’t test me, big boy.”

“What do you want?” Arcee barked, both her firearms aimed at the Decepticon, her gaze momentarily landing on First Aid. “That’s not Jazz.”

“Right to the point; a fem after my own spark! Well, you see what I have here. I’d like to make a trade,” Knock Out’s grip tightened around First Aid’s arm even more, the action and Knock Out’s words causing a sudden panic to rise up in First Aid’s spark. Knock Out was not sure why Arcee mentioned someone named ‘Jazz’, but he was not inclined to ask.

“ _What?”_ First Aid blinked up to Knock Out. “What are you talking about? What’s going on!? Optimus?” he turned his gaze back to the tallest Autobot in the group. He knew it was the Prime, this was not the first time he had seen the mech in the metal. He just had no idea what was happening, or why Optimus and the others were there.

“Shut up, First Aid. I’m sure Ratchet has been suffering horribly, what with being the only Medic amongst you, and with the constant damage the Decepticons have been dealing you since you all landed on Earth,” Knock Out watched each of the Autobots closely.  “Perhaps he needs an assistant? This is my offer: You get the Medic, I get the Phase Shifter and a free walk out of here.”

Smokescreen, who had been standing beside Optimus looking absolutely enraged, finally spoke up. “If that’s not Jazz, do we still have to make the trade?” he knew the answer, but he asked anyway, just to be sure. He did not want to give up his favorite Iacon relic so easily.

Bumblebee tore his gaze away from Knock Out and his apparent hostage to glare at Smokescreen instead, beeping and intoning with a look of irritation that the younger bot would even ask such a thing.

“Optimus, we don’t need to give him what he wants. There’s five of us and only one of him. I’m not picking up any other signals in the area. We can take him. Easily,” Arcee smiled to Knock Out at her last words.

“Yeah! C’mon! We got this!” Smokescreen aimed his arm cannon at Knock Out’s head, his other hand still clutching the Phase Shifter.

Knock Out seemed unphased by the threats, instead transforming his free hand with the flick of a wrist into a large drill bit. He gave the dangerous power tool a few quick spins before placing the tip up against the side of First Aid’s head plate. “You were saying, Arcee?”

“I fragging hate you, you know that?” the fembot growled.

“The feeling’s mutual, dearie,” Knock Out smiled back.

“Knock Out, w-what are you _doing_!?” First Aid could not believe how quickly this had all escalated. One minute he was staring at trees, the next minute he was moments away from getting a lobotomy. He reached out with his EM field to the other Autobots to convey his fear and panic and was met with five other fields, all expressing concern and apprehension for his wellbeing.

“I said ‘ _Shut up’_ ,” Knock Out growled to First Aid, his gaze never leaving the others. “Now, hand over the Phase Shifter, and you get the little Medic.”

Optimus Prime had up to this point said nothing as he watched and listened to the others attempt to handle this situation on their own. There were certainly words that were said that he would not have chosen to use, but he knew they were waiting for his final say-so to act. He recognized the smaller bot trembling in Knock Out’s grasp: First Aid. Ratchet truly would be overjoyed to have another Medic working alongside him.

“Smokescreen, do as he says,” Optimus finally gave the word, and as he took several steps back, the others following suit. Smokescreen, grumbling all the while, stepped forward and slowly held the Phase Shifter out to Knock Out.

Knock Out was just as cautious as he approached Smokescreen, holding the drill bit up against First Aid’s head until the very last second before he snatched the relic away with a clawed hand. In the same action, he released First Aid from his grasp and gave him a shove towards the Autobots. The smaller bot was not used to the uneven ground of Earth and would have fallen on his aft, had Arcee not been there to catch him.

“There,” Knock Out was already backing towards the tree line. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He slapped the Phase Shifter onto his left wrist as the drill flipped back into the opening armor plates of his forearm and was replaced with his hand. Turning the dial, Knock Out smirked over to Smokescreen as the relic hummed with power, and he casually placed his entire hand through the tree beside him, just to rub it in.

Smokescreen was so livid he turned and marched towards the still-open Groundbridge. “Are we done here? I’m leaving,” and he disappeared through the portal without any type of confirmation from anyone.

Optimus Prime turned his head to watch Smokescreen leave the scene, the faintest trace of disappointment overshadowing his features before he turned back to the Decepticon. “Knock Out…you’re trading a talented Medic for a simple Iacon relic. Surely Megatron would benefit more from an additional Medic onboard the Nemesis than the Phase Shifter?”

“I’m only here to do my Master’s bidding, Prime. I don’t question His orders”, that was, of course, a lie. Megatron had no idea of the transaction that was taking place at this moment. Knock Out took another step back, inwardly wincing at the look of genuine pity Optimus Prime was now giving him. He had seen that look before, many times.

“I have asked you before, Knock Out, and now I ask you again: Will you join us? I again offer you the opportunity to do so,” Optimus began. “Join the Autobots. We are in need of Medics, as you have already stated. Return to our base with us. I would be your leader, but I would never require you to refer to me as your ‘Master’. You would be a free bot, beholden to no one and nothing except for the Autobot cause, which is to restore our home planet Cybertron to a habitable form. All we are fighting for is the opportunity to go home. Don’t you want to go home, Knock Out?”

Knock Out had removed his hand from the tree once Smokescreen was no longer around to torment and turned the Phase Shifter off. Crossing his arms over his chest plates, he eyed Optimus with a look of boredom. “ _This_ line again?”

First Aid finally spoke up, after muttering a quick ‘thank you’ to Arcee for catching him. He blinked to Knock Out. “You changed your mind? What about the Nemesis? I thought _you_ were the one who needed an assistant?” Not that he was complaining, but this was a completely unexpected turn of events. Even though he had only known Knock Out for a short time, this handover seemed highly uncharacteristic of him, of _any_ Decepticon. “Why don’t you come with us?” suddenly, First Aid felt a sense of urgency around the whole situation, he did not know why, but he felt as though this needed to happen, now. He took a step back towards the Decepticon. “Knock Out, come on. Come with us!”

“Are you outta yer fraggin’ mind!?” Acree grabbed First Aid around the waist and she began to haul him back towards the Groundbridge. “You’re delusional, you’ve been with the Decepticons for too long. Let’s go.”

“No! Wait! Let him come with us! He’ll come with us!” First Aid yelled towards the remaining bots as he attempted to push free from Arcee’s hold, but she easily carted him away, the pair disappearing into the glowing aura.

Bulkhead was quick to follow. He transformed the two gigantic maces at the ends of his arms back into two almost-as-gigantic hands, giving a final leer to Knock Out before he slipped into the portal as well. Now only Bumblebee and Optimus remained. Bumblebee shook his head to his comrades, then perked a brow to Knock Out.

To the human ear (to every human ear except Rafael’s, that is), Bumblebee’s vocalizations were nothing more that electronic tones interspersed with beeping and whirling clicks, but to any Transformer, the sounds entering the audial canal were data, translated into words by a bot’s processors. The end result did not give Bumblebee a voice, per say, but the words he ‘spoke’ were clear. This was how Knock Out was able to understand the bot now. {“Why are you doing this? Why hand First Aid over like that? Was it really just for the Phase Shifter?”}

Knock Out shrugged his wheeled shoulders, optics flicking away for a moment as he seriously considered the question, one which he was already struggling to answer for himself. His voice was a sigh as he responded, as though his admission was a sign of defeat. “He would have never made it on the Nemesis, Bumblebee. Megatron…the others” he shook his head, “they would have eaten him alive. First Aid’s just too…innocent. He’s too _good_.”

{”So, you’re handing him over to us, and Megatron doesn’t know?”} Bumblebee was clearly surprised.

At that, Knock Out again gave an almost fearful glance up and around at the sky overhead, and he failed to reign in the wave of paranoia that pulsed from his EM field.  “No….Megatron _does not_ know, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

Optimus offered a hand, his large digits extended to Knock Out. “Knock Out…come with us. _You too_ are better than the Deceptions. I can see that good in you. You are nobler than you’re willing to give yourself credit for. Your actions today are proof of that. Come with me...Come with _us_. All you have to do it take my hand,” Optimus’s lengthy stay on Earth has him using human words, which struck Knock Out as amusing, even as he considered Optimus’ offer.

Knock Out stared at the hand that was outstretched in his direction, the hand of the last known Prime, extended to him, and only him, like a holy offering from all thirteen Primes themselves, as though the Gods were offering him reparation for all of his past sins. It was so tempting.  He stared, optics wide for several solid klicks, and for a moment, both Optimus and Bumblebee thought Knock Out might actually grasp the opportunity before him.

Bumblebee swore he saw Knock Out’s clawed fingers twitch for just a second before the crimson bot threw his head back and laughed, his characteristic nonchalance returning as quickly as it had disappeared. He was too afraid. He would never admit it then and there, but he was too afraid. The Decepticons might be brutal and ruthless, but by this point, the brutality and ruthlessness were predictable, and familiar, and the Autobots and whatever they had to offer were not. It was safer, he reasoned, to be amongst predictable heathens than unpredictable saints.

“Not this time, Prime, but if you keep asking, maybe I’ll change my mind…someday,” Knock Out gave a graceful bow to Optimus, and a wink of an optic to Bumblebee as he rose from his genuflection to the Prime before he turned and headed off towards the direction of his ship, the Phase Shifter secured tightly on his arm. He didn’t once for a second think Optimus and Bumblebee would attempt to apprehend him with his back turned, they were too honorable for that, and he was right.

Hearing the Groundbridge close behind him, he turned to look back at the now empty landscape, giving the space the Groundbridge had previously occupied a final glimpse before he started towards the direction of his ship. The spring in his step at the thought of having secured his favorite Iacon relic was short-lived, however. Now it was back to the ship, back to the mine, and back to the Nemesis. Back to Megatron.

He thought no other bot was there, in the middle of Russia, to notice his shoulders slump and his armor plating wilt as he boarded the Starhopper and took off towards the Energon mine.

He was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	6. A Sacrifice

_“I’ve returned with the items you requested, Lord Megatron,” Knock Out said, his gaze focused on his pointed digits as his form rose up on the lift from the hangar on the lower levels of the Nemesis, where he’d landed his Starhopper upon his return. “The Vehicons are moving them into storage as we speak.”_

_“Excellent, Knock Out,” Megatron did not turn from the control panels at the head of the bridge, his hands clasped behind his massive back. “And the **other** items?”_

_Knock Out paused in his steps, blinking to Megatron. “’Other items’, my Lord?”_

_“Why, yes. The Iacon relic you managed to secure? And your little Medic friend?” Megatron chose then to turn around, the words ‘I know **everything** ’ written all over his faceplates._

_Oh slag. Knock Out stood motionless for a moment, weighing his options, weighing his next words. A movement to his left caught his attention before he could speak, and he inwardly cringed as Soundwave came into view. A purple line of audio bounced across the slender bot’s black visor as he replayed the recording. “’No….Megatron **does not** know, and I’d prefer to keep it that way’.”_

_How in the name of Primus did Soundwave have that!? Knock Out had scanned for the Decepticon and his annoying symbiote Laserbeak a dozen times during his encounter with the Autobots, and he’d come up with nothing. Had the eyes and ears of the Decepticons learned to cloak himself now as well!? He gaped at Soundwave before turning back to Megatron, who was already stalking towards him. This was fine, this would turn out fine. He could get out of this relatively unscathed by making a peace offering and finding something convincing to say. He quickly popped open a panel and reached into his subspace, offering up the Phase Shifter._

_“H-here it is, my Lord! One Phase Shifter! Just for you!” he held it out to Megatron, who snatched it from his hand with a violent swipe of his own as he continued with heavy steps towards Knock Out._

_“And where is the Autobot Medic?” Megatron had Knock Out backed up against the wall in a matter of seconds. The leader of the Decepticons stood a full five meters taller than Knock Out, so he was easily cowed by his Master’s form. Megatron towered over him for a moment before leaning down, his silver faceplates mere centimeters from Knock Out’s._

_Knock Out’s proximity alerts flashed all over his HUD, pulsing the words ‘DANGER! WARNING!’ across his gaze for a moment until he shut them off. He had quickly learned that with Megatron, unfortunately, flirting did nothing. This was a great frustration to Knock Out, who relied so heavily on his good looks to get what he wanted.  He could have offered himself to the Decepticon warlord on a platter and it would have been useless. To have this major weapon in Knock Out’s arsenal rendered inoperable was a huge disadvantage to him, it meant he had to rely on his sharp wit and ability to fast-talk himself out of dangerous situations, and **every** situation with Megatron was dangerous. No, he’d learned that what Megatron wanted was to see mechs tremble under his gaze. He enjoyed watching bots beg for mercy and grovel under the imposing shadow of his frame. It was not something Knock Out had been used to, but he’d picked up some pointers from watching Starscream’s interactions with their Lord and had learned to replicate them almost flawlessly. _

_The fear Knock Out was projecting from his EM field was however, entirely real, and he purposefully cast that net as wide as possible so that Megatron was fully aware of his current emotional state. As usual, Knock Out was unable to pick up anything regarding Megatron’s own EM field. The old Gladiator had learned to keep it so well guarded, it was as though it did not exist. Once, Knock Out had felt the brush of Megatron’s signature exactly once in the million years he had personally known him, but the fact was that Megatron did not need to deploy his EM field to get his emotions across, because the mech only ever expressed one: Anger._

_“Where. Is. He?” Megatron repeated, a heated vent of air wafting down over Knock Out’s form as he spoke. He lifted a gigantic silvery arm and placed his hand against the wall of the ship, just to the side of Knock Out’s head._

_“He...he....Well I....I had to trade him! For the Phase Shifter!” Knock Out swallowed hard, shrinking under Megatron’s stare and leaning away from the imposing hand beside his face. “The Autobots weren’t going to just **give** it away!”_

_“And you felt this was a reasonable trade? A Medic for an Iacon relic?” Megatron narrowed his red gaze._

_“Y-yes?” Knock Out ventured. He placed his own hand against his red chest, simultaneously ducking under Megatron’s arm to slink away. “He wasn’t even that good! I **could** have brought him aboard, my Liege, but he would have been **useless**!”_

_“’No….Megatron **does not** know, and I’d prefer to keep it that way’,” Soundwave repeated the recording of Knock Out’s voice from his place on the bridge as he watched the event unfolding before him._

_Knock Out sent Soundwave a seething glare filled with both hate and betrayal before he gasped, wincing as Megatron suddenly had him by the left elbow. The larger mech’s pointed digits dug painfully into the ball-and-socket joint._

_“That was not your decision to **make** , Knock Out,” Megatron continued to pinch his fingers into the metal of Knock Out’s protoform. He tightened his grip on the smaller mech’s arm and twisted, the points of his sharp fingers drawing Energon and forcing Knock Out’s form down towards the floor as he tried to find a better position to escape the pain Megatron was inflicting. _

_“He was useless!” Knock Out repeated, “He wouldn’t have lasted a **day** , my Lord!” Knock Out gasped, turning and dropping to a knee as he tried to squirm from Megatron’s grip. He grit his denta plates and winced against the pain in his elbow joint. He had expected the violence, now it was just a matter of riding out the pain until Megatron released him. He would. He knew Megatron would, he just had to be patient. “He was too weak! He would not have served you well, I swear! Let the Autobots have him, it gives them no advantage!”_

_“And yet you attempted to keep this information from me. Why?”_

_Oh slag, why? Because First Aid was too good to be a Decepticon? Because the Autobot would have dropped into a horrible depression the minute he’d set a ped on this ship? Because his processors would have been unable to handle the daily horrors that went on around here? Because the bot was an interface virgin, and Primus only knows what Starscream would have **done** about that? Because Knock Out couldn’t spare the time or energy to protect First Aid from Starscream, or Megatron, or Soundwave or Shockwave or Dreadwing or any of other of the Decepticons who would have attempted to take advantage of him on a **daily** basis and in so many ways because Knock Out was too busy trying to protect himself?_

_“I’m sorry!” was the best that Knock Out could come up with. He was already bracing himself against the floor with his right hand, his left arm still leaking Energon in Megatron’s grip. “Please, my Lord, I had a lapse in judgment!  I thought it better to simply deliver the Iacon relic to you and – “_

_“You were wrong in regard to your thought processors, then,” Megatron gave a final pinch of his sharp fingers into Knock Out’s protoform flesh, Energon trickling down onto the floor of the ship below them. Knock Out felt his fingers going numb, then there was a sudden ‘pop’ noise as one of his inner cables broke under Megatron’s grip and he felt a searing pain flare at his elbow and race up towards his shoulder._

_“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, my Lord! Please!” Just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes and Knock Out knew Megatron would release him. He just had to cry and beg for mercy a little bit longer, and it would all be over. He knew the pattern, it was all so predictable at this point. What Knock Out had not predicted however, was Megatron’s unexpected movement as he swung him by the arm, slamming Knock Out’s frame into the concave wall of the ship so hard he was fairly certain he had offlined for a few klicks there, as he suddenly found himself crumpled on the floor at Megatron’s peds, his processors reeling from the impact. The proximity warnings flared to life again, overriding the preliminary damage report that was also flashing across his internal display. Slag, the old bastard was really angry this time._

_“No more unaccompanied trips,” Megatron practically spat down at him before he finally released his hold on Knock Out’s arm and moved back onto the bridge. “I cannot afford to lose our only Medic. You will remain on the ship until further notice, and if I **do** require you to leave, you will be heavily escorted.”_

_“Y-Yes, my Lord,” Knock Out pulled himself back up onto his peds with his good arm by bracing himself against the wall, taking a moment to skim the diagnostic reports that were filling his HUD regarding the damage he was dealt. He was lucky it was only temporary. He was also lucky that Megatron apparently either didn’t care or didn’t feel like delving deeper into his loyalty, or lack thereof, to the Decepticon cause._

_“Get out of my sight,” his Lord bellowed from the bridge, and Knock Out was quick to oblige him._

_Knock Out hurried across the ramp and off of the gigantic platform that overlooked the bow of the Nemesis, cradling his left arm in his right hand, his thumb pressed over the puncture wounds to stop the leak. He was very careful not to look any of the Vehicons in the optics as he passed by the few that stood guard on the bridge, his momentary fear already masked behind the scowl now set on his faceplates. Not that he gave a frag what the Vehicons thought of him, but he refused to let them think he might be easily overpowered in a moment of physical weakness._

_He constantly worried that the Vehicons would eventually get sick of their place on the ship and attempt to commandeer it. Primus knows there were enough of them that if they all worked together, they probably could. They never did, though. Knock Out had not caught so much as a simple statement of dislike from a Vehicon regarding their situation or lot in life, as though they were incapable of thoughts beyond serving their Lord. That didn’t make Knock Out any less paranoid._

_His audials still ringing from his meeting with the wall, Knock Out did not hear Starscream approaching from behind, and was only alerted to his presence when again his proximity sensors lit up around the edges of his internal feed. He was very quick to whip around and face the Seeker, ready to bring out the drill if necessary._

_“My, my, aren’t we prickly,” Starscream raised both hands and took a step back, which for anyone else would have been a true gesture that they meant no harm. Megatron’s Second in Command then lowered his hands and laced his long fingers behind his back as he carried on down the hallway beside Knock Out, accompanying him to the medbay whether he wanted it or not. “Tsk, and look at your finish. You look **dreadful** , Knock Out. Rough trip?”_

_“Like you weren’t skulking in the shadows back there to hear the whole thing,” Knock Out glared up to those annoyingly large, glowing red optics of Starscream’s as he marched down the corridor._

_“And why **didn’t** you want Megatron to know, hmm? Insubordination is punishable by death, you know.”_

_“You **would** know, wouldn’t you, Starscream,” it was not a question. Knock Out paused at the entrance to the medbay to allow the door to slide open, though he was only able to take two steps into the room before Starscream had one of his clawed hands around his arm, the injured arm. Knock Out couldn’t contain the yelp that escaped his vocalizers as the pain in his arm doubled under Starscream’s grasp. He knew pulling away would only make it worse, so instead he was forced to turn and face Starscream head on. The Seeker was only slightly taller, yet despite that, Knock Out still had at least a thousand pounds on him. Starscream’s frame was spindly enough that Knock Out could snap his servos in two, if he really wanted to.  Plus, as Startscream’s Medic, Knock Out knew all of his bodily weaknesses. “Let go of me **this instant**.”_

_“ **Shut up**! I’m **watching** you, Knock Out. I know you’ve been trying to leave us for quite some time,” Starscream seethed down to the Decepticon Medic, his grip still firm on Knock Out’s arm. “You may find it ironic, those words coming from **me** , but my situation is different. Do you know what the difference is? You won’t come back. I **always** come back, and Megatron knows it,” he said, as though he was proud of that fact._

_“That’s your problem, Starscream,” Knock Out was careful to hide which word he placed the emphasis on in that sentence. The two bots stared each other down, their faceplates inches from one another. As usual, Knock Out did not want this to turn into a physical altercation. He was already down one servo, which gave Starscream the advantage. He might still win, but he knew the probability of sustaining further damage from such a fight was high._

_Starscream’s ever-expressive eyebrows tilted into a glare as he held Knock Out’s gaze for a few more seconds, then he raised his free hand and slowly raked his sharp fingers down the front of Knock Out’s chest plates. The action would not harm Knock Out, but Starscream, like everyone else, knew how particular the bot was about his finish. Starscream smirked, expecting Knock Out to erupt in a fit of violence, which was what he was hoping for._

_It **did** irk Knock Out that his finish, already scratched and tarnished from his excursion on Cyberton, was being marred even further, but he saw an opportunity here to escape Starscream’s wrath without incident. He glanced down to the deep score marks on his chest, then simply glared back up to Starscream as though they had no effect on his psyche. “Get the frag out of my medbay.”_

_Starscream, clearly disappointed that his actions garnered no response, released Knock Out immediately and turned on one of his stiletto heels, marching out of the medbay, his wings high and tight with agitation. Knock Out was quick to slam a fist on the entry control panel on the wall, causing the door to shut behind the Seeker and lock, effectively sealing Knock Out inside for as long as he wanted, or until Megatron forced him to reopen the door again._

_It was only during these rare moments of solitude that Knock Out allowed himself to express the fear that had become a daily routine in his life. He turned away from the closed door, covering his optics with his right hand as he spoke to any deity that was still willing to listen to him._

_“Primus protect me...”_

 

That was the recall that slipped from Knock Out’s memory banks and into his processor as he stood on the bridge of the Nemesis beside Starscream. The recall itself was several years old; much time had passed since the day Knock Out had handed First Aid over to the Autobots.

Presently, Starscream glowered before those gathered on the bridge: Bumblebee, Arcee and Bulkhead. He was attempting to retake the ship in order to leave Cyberton altogether after he had freed Knock Out and the remaining Vehicons from the holding bay. Starscream had managed to procure the Immobilizer and was using it to threaten them all, the Iacon relic so powerful that one zap from the staff left even the strongest of mechs rigid and paralyzed on the ground.

Prior to his imprisonment, Knock Out had tried to convince the Autobots that now, after all this time, he was finally willing to switch sides, to be on the “winning team”, because who didn’t like to win? But they hadn’t believed him. He supposed he couldn’t blame them for that. He had, after all, been refusing Optimus Prime’s proposal for nearly a thousand years.

There had still been, at that moment in time when Starscream had managed to free him, a small fraction of Knock Out’s mind that had seriously considered leaving with Megatron’s Second in Command. Knock Out had even, in that moment, mentioned aloud the possibility of returning to Earth now that Unicron no longer held an interest in the planet.

And then Starscream told Knock Out to shut up.

That was all it took to trigger the recall and along with it, all of the unprocessed emotions he had been so careful to hold back during that original encounter.

Knock Out snapped back to reality just in time to see and hear Bumblebee tell Starscream that the Iacon relic he was holding was merely a replica, which gave Starscream pause long enough for Bumblebee to make his move. The two bots wrestled over the staff between them as Bumblebee grabbed ahold of it with both hands and attempted to yank it from Starscream’s grasp.

“I will silence you _forever_!” Starscream snarled, having quickly gained the upper hand as he managed to both control the staff and aim one of his arm rockets directly at Bumblebee’s face.

Knock Out’s optics went wide at this display, and before his processors had even caught up with his actions, he found himself reaching _through_ Starscream with the aid of the Phase Shifter on his wrist to grab hold of the Immobilizer and jerk it through Starscream’s body. The sudden surge of anger that swelled up inside of Knock Out was so great that he felt himself lose complete control to the emotion as he swung the staff squarely against Starscream’s head so hard that the powerful weapon snapped in two as Starscream sank to his knees, unconscious before his frame even hit the floor. Knock Out stood over the Seeker’s fallen form for several nanoclicks, just _waiting_ for him to attempt to revive himself so he could strike him again.

Bumblebee froze in place where he stood, so shocked at what he’d just witnessed that he was unsure how to react. Acree and Bulkhead gaped to one another before looking back to Knock Out, who finally turned back to Bumblebee when it appeared that Starscream wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

“ _Now_ do you believe me when I say I’m joining the winning team?” His anger suddenly turned off like a switch, Knock Out smiled proudly to Bumblebee, gesturing down to the fallen Seeker with a clawed hand.

“Knock Out,” Bumblebee sighed, raising a hand to cover his face for a moment before he indicated the now broken Immobilizer, “we _needed_ that!”

“What? It’s _real_!?” Knock Out blinked down to the remaining piece of the Iacon relic in his hand, one end still sizzling sparks. “This is the _real_ one!?” He looked back to Bumblebee and the others, his shoulder plates drooping a bit “This defection isn’t really going the way I’d imagined…”

 

When Cybertronian archivists would later transcribe the historic battle that took place on Cybertron that day, they would be sure to mention the heroics of the Autobots: “Bulkhead, who bravely and safely piloted the Nemesis through the chaos of Terrorcons formed by Unicron from dormant Predacon remains. Bumblebee, who assisted Optimus Prime in the take-down of Unicron by holding the Lord of Chaos back with the aid of the Polarity Gauntlet. Predaking, Skylynx and Darksteel, who chased Unicron’s undead hoards into the very Well itself, ready to die defending it. Arcee, Smokescreen, and Wheejack, whose timeless selflessness and courage on the battlefield provided Optimus Prime the opportunity to take the AllSpark within himself.”

And the one line they gave to Megatron’s former Chief Medical Officer: “And Knock Out, who broke the Immobilizer and was present for Unicron’s entombment inside the AllSpark containment vessel. And thus, four million years of civil war came to an end.”

No bot there that day was prepared for what that end truly entailed. Megatron denouncing his four million years of inflicting oppression and calling for an end to the Decepticon faction so readily was hardly expected, least of all by Starscream, whom Knock Out could not recall ever looking so shocked and dismayed at his Master’s words, his now _former_ Master’s words.

In the moments after Megatron transformed and took flight, headed north across the planet’s horizon, Starscream had watched him go, mouth agape at what he’d just heard. Then he looked back to the Autobots as though he had forgotten they were standing there, his gaze coming to rest on Knock Out. “Well,” Starscream slowly backed away from the group, “we all have plenty to think about, don’t we?” He then transformed, his jet engines characteristically screaming as he took off in the opposite direction that Megatron had departed.

Knock Out wondered if he would ever see the Seeker again; a part of him didn’t care one way or the other.

The sun was setting, long shadows cast across the metallic surface of the planet by the Nemesis, when Ratchet, First Aid, and Ultra Magnus finally made it back to the rest of the group beside the Well of AllSparks.

First Aid had not expected Knock Out to be among the survivors, yet despite what had transpired between him and Knock Out in the past, First Aid found he could not help the feelings of excitement and optimism that the Decepticon had finally switched sides. He dared to run up to Knock Out, who was startled by his willingness to be in such close proximity. “You did it? You really, finally did it?”

Knock Out had been standing off to the side of the Autobots, unsure of his place among them in more ways than one, when First Aid approached him. First Aid stood so close that his EM field was bombarding Knock Out’s own with hope and happiness, and it was completely throwing him off guard when he already felt uncomfortable with the current situation.  “I…..Yes. Yes, I finally did.” He only hoped it wasn’t too late.

“I knew you would. I always told them you would,” First Aid said, and Knock Out could see the smile hidden behind his mask as his optics crinkled. First Aid had started to say more, but it was then that Optimus Prime drew everyone’s attention from where he stood beside the Well.

The speech Optimus Prime gave that evening would go down as one of the most famous in all of Cybertronian history. For ages to come, bots would quote from it whenever the moment called for inspiration, or courage, or comfort. Historians would define it as almost theological. Academics would review it and expound on it as one of the defining speeches in influence and leadership. Politicians would work it into their platforms as a way to promote greater Cybertronian unity during campaign season.

It made First Aid cry.

Arcee, Bulkhead, and Ratchet, especially Ratchet, had tried to convince Optimus to abandon his plans to return the AllSpark and the Matrix of Leadership to the Well, but in their own sparks they knew he spoke the truth: It was the only way to ensure the continued existence of their race.

All of the bots gathered had watched the last Prime sacrifice himself for the greater good of quite literally their entire world. For some time, no one said a word as they witnessed the hundreds of thousands of sparks erupting from the Well like so many Earth fireworks. For the Autobots, they saw a dawning of a new generation. All those sparks, returned out to the planet to be cultivated and recreated into new lives.

For Knock Out, all he saw was how many deaths it had taken them all to get this far. It left him feeling hollow inside, as though his own spark had left its chamber to start a new life somewhere else, without him. The longer he watched, the more his mind began to process the enormity of what he was seeing. _So many deaths_. How many of those deaths had he been personally responsible for?

Overwhelmed with the emotions from the energy signatures gathered around him, First Aid, completely beside himself, threw his arms around Knock Out’s waist and quietly sobbed into his armor plating. Knock Out’s immediate reaction was to cringe at the optic cleanser now streaking his red finish, but he quickly changed his expression and dared to set his free hand down on First Aid’s high shoulder plates for a gentle pat. He supposed he should have said something, but no words seemed appropriate for the moment.

The sun had set by the time the explosion of sparks finally dissipated, the last tiny offshoots of color reflected against the bots’ armor in the growing darkness. They all shifted their gaze from the sky, turning to look at one another through glowing optics.

“Now what?” Arcee was the first to speak, her servos wrapped around her frame protectively in an attempt to comfort herself.

No one gave any response for several seconds before Bumblebee spoke up, “Now we rebuild our home. A new beginning, just like Optimus said.” He looked around to each of them for confirmation, and the others nodded in unison.

Knock Out had not been a part of that conversation, as brief as it was, nor had Bumblebee included him in his momentary search for validation amongst his peers.

First Aid finally released Knock Out’s frame and quietly sniffled as he wiped at the Energon tears leaking out from under his visor. “*Ahem*…Sorry, Knock Out.”

It was as though the sound of his spoken name suddenly reminded the others that Knock Out was present among them, for six sets of blue optics turned in his direction. Ratchet’s glare stood out in the darkness as he moved past the other bots, pausing beside Wheeljack.

“Hand me your stasis cuffs,” Ratchet held out a hand to the Wrecker, who was all too happy to comply with the request.

“Ratchet,” Bumblebee began, looking like he did not want to have this conversation right now.

“As Chief Medical Officer, Knock Out falls under my direct command. Therefore, I am well within my rights to do with him as I see fit,” taking the cuffs from Wheeljack, Ratchet moved towards Knock Out, First Aid eyeing him warily as he backed away from the situation. Ratchet held Knock Out’s glowing red gaze as he lifted the cuffs to him, giving a silent nod for Knock Out to hold up his hands.

Knock Out had expected this, that they wouldn’t trust him immediately. Fortunately for him, a million years working under Megatron had taught him when silence was a better option than a typical witty retort. He knew this was Ratchet making a power move, asserting his dominance as CMO in front of his peers. That was fine. Knock Out purposefully averted his gaze from Ratchet’s as he offered both hands, and Ratchet was quick to lock the stasis cuffs over his wrists.

“We should get back inside. I think everyone could use a bit of rest,” Ratchet said as he glanced back to the others, then looked to First Aid. “Take Ultra Magnus and direct anyone in need of medical assistance back to the medbay. I’ll meet you there shortly,” he then looked back to Knock Out and jutted his chin towards the open bay of the Nemesis, indicating he should start walking.

Knock Out did not look at the others as he turned and followed Ratchet’s silent command, his optics focused on his wrists locked in the stasis cuffs. Suddenly Optimus Prime’s final words didn’t sound quite as inspiring: “For in my spark I know that this is not the end, but merely a new beginning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that since I can barely keep track of the units of time myself, I'll list them here so that no one else gets as confused as I do:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	7. A Rumor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all my awesome readers! I just wanted to mention that I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks, so Chapter 7 will be my last update until I get back. I plan on posting Chapter 8 on July 30th, so please check back then!  
> Thanks to everyone for sticking around this long and leaving such wonderful comments! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Ratchet took Knock Out to the actual brig of the Nemesis, as opposed to the vacant room where Bumblebee had confined Knock Out and the Vehicons before, and it was there that he deposited Knock Out. He had not even bothered to remove the stasis cuffs as he directed Knock Out into the cell, then quickly programed the data screen on the outside of the containment unit. A sudden humming noise accompanied the dozens of laser beams that appeared between Ratchet and Knock Out, the orange-colored bars all perfectly inline across the expanse of the cell Knock Out occupied.

Knock Out finally found his vocalizer as Ratchet turned to go, “Will you least let me help? They’re injured! I can assist you!”

“I have First Aid for that,” Ratchet had paused at Knock Out’s words, though barely.

“It’s _my_ medbay! I know where everything is! If you’d just let me – “

“Not any more it’s not,” Ratchet countered, and those were his parting words as he walked away from the cell. Once he reached the end of the corridor, he swiped his hand over the light display, plunging the brig into complete darkness, save the orange glow of the lightbars ensuring Knock Out’s imprisonment.

Knock Out had watched him go, trying to think of something to say that might change Ratchet’s mind, but he could not. Again, he told himself that this was fine. It had been a very long, very taxing day, for everyone. All he had to do was be patient.

 

Knock Out sat in the cell for half a deca-cycle before he was finally released. Well, “released” was perhaps not the most accurate word.

It was Bulkhead who was sent down to escort him from the brig and up to the medbay. The gigantic Wrecker had not said a single word to Knock Out when he arrived to remove the code on the lightbars. He instead nodded for Knock Out to follow, as though he had no fear of the Decepticon trying any funny business to escape behind his back, which was entirely justified: Knock Out had no intention of escaping. He had nowhere else to go.

Knock Out did not enjoy being in such close proximity to Bulkhead. If there was one bot on this ship he did not ever want to be left alone with, it was this one. The two of them shared an extensive, unfortunate history that was almost as long as the war itself: Breakdown had once been a Wrecker. Only Wheeljack, the other Wrecker of the group, knew of this past link between Knock Out and Bulkhead. Although Ultra Magnus had come to lead the Wreckers later on in the war, he was not aware of their shared history.  So it was, in fact, that if there were _two_ bots on this ship that Knock out did not ever want to be left alone with, it was Bulkhead and Wheeljack. Primus help him if they ever cornered him in a room together. He was certain he would not make it out alive.

Knock Out lagged several paces behind, so that if Bulkhead were to turn and strike, he was well out of servo’s reach. Lucky for him, the Wrecker seemed to hold very little interest in doing anything but escorting. Bulkhead had dropped Knock Out off at the medbay, then quickly departed, leaving Knock Out to stand on the ramp, still cuffed, as he surveyed his former workplace. Everything looked the same, except that two Autobots were now running the show. It appeared that some sort of inventory was taking place, as everything that had once been on the shelves and in storage compartments was now out on the countertops. Knock Out had always kept his medbay as organized and as spotless as possible, so he didn’t quite understand the need for all of this, especially when _they could have just asked him where everything was and how much of it they had._

First Aid was quick to spot Knock Out on the ramp, and he grabbed a data pad as he waved him over with his other hand. Knock Out complied, though his optics were on Ratchet, his back to them both as he stood off to the right side of the medbay at a workstation, hovering over a screen.

“Let me just get a quick scan of you,” First Aid tilted the data pad as a blue beam of light traveled outward from its end and shifted over Knock Out’s form from his head to his peds. First Aid tabulated the information he had gathered with a few taps of his fingers on the screen, then he sent a sudden glare to Ratchet. “You weren’t _refueling_ him!?”

“He wasn’t moving around much down there, no reason to,” Ratchet said, not bothering to look up from his own screen.

“He’s at _seven percent_!”

“So, fix him then.”

Knock Out was certain First Aid was rolling his optics behind that visor as he set the data pad aside and moved to one of the counters, selecting a bottle of medical-grade Energon and unscrewing the cap before he handed it to Knock Out. “Sip it slowly. You know what happens if you don’t.”

“Thank you,” Knock Out took the bottle in one hand, the movements awkward since his wrists were still cuffed together. It was true, no one had come by with any Energon cubes for him for the entire deca-cycle, which had meant he resorted to powering down more hours than he was online. The recharge slab in his containment unit could only restore his power cells, but all bots required both energy and fuel to survive. He took a slow swig from the bottle, eyeing the rest of the contents on the counters. “You’re conducting some sort of inventory?”

“Yes, of all the supplies on board. We were hoping you could unlock a few of the cupboards and containers for us,” First Aid said quickly, for he was still glaring at Ratchet’s back. “Ratchet, I heard you tell Bee you’d make sure Knock Out got refueled while he was down there. So now you’re lying to our Commander?”

 _Commander_? Knock Out raised a brow to that. It seemed someone had been promoted while he was serving time.

“It was not a lie,” Ratchet still didn’t look around to the pair as he tapped away on the touchscreen before him. On the monitor above him, a full blueprint of Starscream’s form suddenly popped up on the right side; on the left, his mechiological data and med specs, including his medical history. Ratchet’s optics flicked back and forth as he read through the entire screen with the speed only a mechanical being was capable of, his finger tapping on the touchscreen below him to bring up another page, and another, and another.

Knock Out’s spark dropped into his peds at the sight of the monitor above Ratchet, and he choked on his Energon as he quickly set the bottle aside, hacking on the fuel before it went down the wrong pipe. “Ratchet! *cough* Ratchet, wait!” he started towards the CMO.

“I told you to sip it _slowly_! I’m not cleaning it up if you purge everywhere!” First Aid said, not realizing the real reason Knock Out was struggling to swallow.

Ratchet finally turned to face them both as he heard Knock Out approach. That was all it took for Knock Out to stop in his tracks: The old Medic looked awful, as though he had not recharged _or_ refueled in a deca-cycle himself. The delicate protoform skin of his face was clearly strained from fatigue, and the lights behind his optics were dim. “First Aid, why don’t you go check on Ultra Magnus for a few klicks,” Ratchet said, though his gaze did not leave Knock Out’s.

“But –“ First Aid started.

“Now.”

“Fine…Yes, Sir,” First Aid winced as he corrected himself, giving Knock Out a final glance before he turned and headed up the ramp, out of the medbay. The door slid closed behind him.

Knock Out quickly started in again. “Ratchet, don’t. Just…just don’t look through this. He’s not even here anymore,” he pointed to the blueprints of Starscream up on the monitor. “There’s no reason you need to know these things,” Knock Out was not sure why he even cared, but some sort of fear was reaching up through his temporal cortex that he could not readily explain.

“We don’t know _where_ he is, and he may resurface at some point, so yes, I think it would behoove me to know these things,” Ratchet looked up to the screen once more. “And I don’t need to remind you that as a Medic and the CMO of this ship, I am entitled to his full medical history; to _everyone’s_ full medical history,” Ratchet sped-read through each screen, tapping down at least five more pages at the same speed before he slowed his pace. He had gone back about fifty years. “These records are…extensive.”

Once it became clear that Ratchet would do whatever he damn well pleased, Knock Out turned away from him and the screen. He was not thrilled at all by the idea of reliving the countless hours he had put into repairing Starscream over the centuries. Knock Out slowly moved back to where he had left the bottle of Energon and picked it back up for another sip, not saying a word.

“I see you had to solder his wings back on...multiple times.”

“I did, yes,” Knock Out still did not look back around to Ratchet.

Knock Out could hear Ratchet’s metallic finger tapping on the touchscreen several more times before he paused on another page. There was a long silence as he read, longer than any of the other pages he had stopped on. “Some of these injuries are…not consistent with those one would receive on a battlefield.”

Knock Out’s back straightened at that. How did it happen that _this_ was the first conversation he was having with his supposed new boss? He stared past the bottle in his left hand at a spot on the floor. “Accidents happen.”

The CMRD (Cybertron Medical Record Database) was one of the Iacon Medical Academy’s greatest achievements. Powered by a supercomputer buried somewhere within Cybertron’s core (no one knew exactly where, which is how it still managed to function during the war), the database held the medical records of every Cybertronian that had ever sought medical care from a certified Medic or medical facility. It was searchable by patient name, by injury type, by illnesses, by keyword, by organ and spark type. It was a valuable resource for any Medic when treating a patient, to have access to their full medical history in order to make a better, faster diagnosis. It was rare that an Autobot would have access to the Decepticon’s CMRD, and vice versa. Ratchet intended to make full use of his recent acquisition of codes to the Decepticon database.

 “These injuries are not consistent with accidents, either,” Ratchet said.

“ _Things_ happen,” Knock Out replied, his optics narrowing a bit as he took another sip from the bottle.

Ratchet tapped down to another screen, scanning over the text and slowly shaking his head. So, after all these years, the stories were actually true. Of course, he would never vent a word of what he was seeing to anyone. Ratchet took the confidentiality part of his position very seriously. Over the millennia, he and other Medics had become more than just doctors serving patients, they were also the keepers of secrets. It was and had always been a heavy burden to bear. Ratchet sighed as he brought a hand to his forehead, slowly rubbing it with his fingers. “There were always rumors that Megatron –”

“You shouldn’t be looking at those!” Knock Out finally spun back around, setting the bottle down once more as he stalked back over to Ratchet. “He could be _dead_ for all we know! These might not even _matter_ anymore!” he pointed up to the screen with one hand, the other dragged along for the ride due to the stasis cuffs that bound them together.

Ratchet lowered his hand and met Knock Out’s gaze. Knock Out was struck by the look of concern he saw there, where he was expecting anger. “Why are you still protecting him, then? You’re trying to protect his information.”

“It’s irrelevant!” Knock Out practically yelled. “The war is _over_! It’s just...it’s irrelevant!”

“How do you even have access to these records yourself?” Ratchet’s gaze suddenly narrowed again. “First Aid told me the truth about your academic history, or lack thereof.”

“Oh, _this_ dig again? Fine,” Knock Out glared right back. “Megatron had a Medic onboard before me. He never told me his name, or what happened to him,” although one could assume the worst. “Megatron had his access codes…He gave them to me.”

Ratchet held Knock Out’s gaze for a moment, then turned and looked down to the touchscreen as he typed another name into the CMRD: K-n-o-c-k O-u-t, in Cybertronian script. The blueprints and data of Starscream disappeared from the monitor above and were replaced by Knock Out’s. Ratchet immediately began to surf through the history. It was only five pages long and filled with minor entries such as routine maintenance and vaccinations. “You’ve scrubbed your file,” Ratchet turned back to Knock Out with that same glare. “That’s in direct violation of CMC (Cybertron Medical Code) Section 205 b 1 iii.”

“I _had_ to!” Knock Out was trying to maintain his anger, but it was quickly dissolving into panic. “To protect myself...I had to. Megatron had access to the files...He repeatedly forced me to break doctor-patient confidentiality. I told you, _he_ was the one who gave me the CMRD code to begin with! He had access.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

“So that he could….review Starscream’s file,” Knock Out gave up on trying to project his rage and turned his gaze down to the floor in defeat. Fine. Let Ratchet know the truth. None of it mattered anymore anyway. The war was over. Megatron and Starscream were over. “I didn’t want him having access to _my_ medical information, too,” _or Breakdown’s_ , but he left that part out.

“Why, though?” Ratchet pressed him. “What did Megatron gain by accessing Starscream’s medical records?”

Fragging Autobots, they were always so persistent with everything. Knock Out vented in frustration. “He… liked reading and knowing exactly what _sort_ of damage he’d caused.” He knew Ratchet was staring at him now, he could sense the older Medic’s optics on him. “He… took pleasure in the fact that the pain and suffering he was causing was being catalogued and tabulated. Starscream’s medical file is like Megatron’s ‘Big Book of Accomplishments’,” Knock Out raised his hands, making air quotes with his sharp fingers. “He liked to add new chapters. Frequently.”

“I see,” Ratchet was not surprised by what he was learning, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear. “You scrubbed your file, but you have it on memory, don’t you?”

Knock Out whipped his head back up at that. Now the panic was real. “Yes…but I – “

“Upload it,” Ratchet popped the vitals jack from the workstation with the push of a button, and pulled the cable from the unit, offering his free hand to Knock Out. “Give me your right servo.”

“Ratchet, _please_ ,” Knock Out did not think he would have to resort to begging so quickly into his defection to the Autobot side, but here he was already. He didn’t need to fake it like he had with Megatron, either, this desperation was authentic.

Ratchet had been analyzing Knock Out’s behavior the moment he had set ped into the medbay. He had honestly expected more resistance from the former ‘Con, but now he questioned whether or not he was being too hard on him. Perhaps he should be giving Knock Out the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he should be acting and speaking with a little more compassion. He knew he ought to be trying harder, but the past few weeks had been so overwhelming for Ratchet himself, not to mention everyone else. He was extremely upset over the loss of his best and oldest friend, Optimus Prime. He was worried about the mental health of the other Autobots, how they were handling Prime’s death themselves. Despite winning the war, he was uncertain about the future of Cybertron, and how in Primus’s name they were supposed to rebuild their entire world after four million years of war. He was stressed out because he was the oldest, and in Prime’s absence, the others would look to him for guidance. He was now directly responsible for somehow integrating the ex-Decepticon into their ranks. And he was exhausted for all of those reasons. His frame ached because he was old and he was denying himself proper nutrition and relaxation due to the stress. All of this was suddenly quite clear on his face as he held Knock Out’s gaze.

Ratchet was too tired to make a fight of this, but millions of years of experience told him that kindness was generally better-received when making requests of people. “Knock Out,” he sighed, “upload it, and I’ll _forget_ you’re in violation of the CMC.”

This was a huge concession, Knock Out realized. Ratchet could have taken this information to Ultra Magnus, or Bumblebee, and Primus only know what they would have done with it, but Ratchet was offering to keep it between them, if Knock Out only acquiesced to his wishes. That was a fair deal. Hesitantly, Knock Out offered his right arm, his left raised as well due to the cuffs, and Ratchet popped open the panel along Knock Out’s servo to fit the vitals jack into the port located there.

Knock Out focused on his internal HUD, acknowledging the computer’s request to link his system and upload the data. Then he watched the monitor as the gaps in his minimalist medical history began to fill in. The whole process took several minutes.

“I’m lucky, really,” Knock Out glanced away from the screen. “Megatron only ever had optics for Starscream.”

“Starscream wasn’t so lucky, though,” Ratchet said, eyeing the monitor as the entries filled up.

Knock Out opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and eyed the floor instead. He’d said too much already.

Ratchet pulled the jack from Knock Out’s arm once the history had populated in its entirety. Instead of reviewing every page however, Ratchet tapped his fingers across the touchscreen and closed the database. He turned back to Knock Out. “Why didn’t he leave? Why didn’t _any_ of you leave?”

That had always been the million-credit question, hadn’t it? Knock Out was grateful that Ratchet was not reviewing his file in that exact moment, but the question he’d posed was equally distressing. He turned away from Ratchet and leaned his elbows on the closest countertop, pressing the palms of his bound hands over his optics. “I don’t know…I don’t know. There was…something wrong with him...There was something wrong with _us_.”

Ratchet watched Knock Out as the former Decepticon gripped his head with both hands and shuddered as though he were in pain. He watched him very closely, silently forming the beginnings of a diagnosis.

“Can we not do this anymore?” Knock Out practically whimpered from underneath his hands covering his faceplates.

“Yes, that’s fine,” Ratchet moved away from the touchscreen, making a clear show that he was not going to review Knock Out’s medical records, not at that moment in time, anyway. “Why don’t you finish your Energon,” he suggested as he moved to the opposite end of the room to busy himself with something else.

Knock Out struggled to control the emotions filtering into his processor against his wishes, and he for several nanoklicks remained where he was, hunched over the counter with his head in both hands as though that was the only thing keeping his head physically attached to his body. That was what it felt like to him, at any rate. It took him several deep vents of air before he appeared to finally shake himself out of it, whatever _it_ was, and he slowly moved back to where he’d left the Energon container.

It was at that moment that First Aid returned, glancing from Ratchet to Knock Out and back again as he moved down the ramp. “Ratchet, Magnus wasn’t in his hab suite. I found him in the comms room, assisting Wheeljack with the satellite feed.”

“That fragging idiot,” Ratchet muttered under his breath as he opened a drawer, pulling out some supplies. “He’s only prolonging his recovery.”

“That’s what I told him,” First Aid headed back towards the collection of tools he had been sorting prior to Knock Out’s arrival, and he gave the ex-Con a faint smile as he passed him by. Knock Out did not know what to make of that, or why any of them would be happy that he was here. He was thankful for the interruption, however.

“What happened to him?” Knock Out looked between the two. “I saw you had him on a MARB (Mobile Autobot Repair Bay) when...earlier,” he avoided bringing up the topic of Optimus’s sacrifice directly.

“Skylynx,” First Aid replied, “before…..earlier. He and Darksteel attacked Magnus and Smokescreen while they were looking for Starscream and Shockwave in the Sea of Rust. He’s lucky to be alive.”

“Which he is of course already taking for granted,” Ratchet grumbled as he moved to one of the med-slabs in the room, stepping onto the pedal underneath it, which caused it to shift horizontal like a table.

“That reminds me, I still haven’t been able to locate any phalange struts for his new servo,” First Aid lamented, and Knock Out perked a brow at this.

“You mean to replace his claw?” said Knock Out. “Why don’t you just build him a new one from Vehicon parts? I’ve got a whole stack of them over there in the – “

“…You think we should create Magnus a new servo out of _Vehicon_ parts?” First Aid stopped what he was doing and blinked back to Knock Out, looking a bit disgusted.

“You have _stacks_ of them somewhere in here?” Ratchet was now looking at Knock Out too.

Knock Out blinked between the two of them. He didn’t see what the big deal was. “Yes! Yes, I have _stacks_ of them! Who do you think was responsible for their care when they got injured? We didn’t just _throw_ them off the ship when they became damaged!” He paused for a moment, considering his last statement. “Okay, _I_ didn’t just _throw_ them off the ship when they became damaged! They’re all the same! Their parts are interchangeable! It would be stupid _not_ to keep spares laying around!”

Ratchet and First Aid shared a look between each other, which was not lost on Knock Out.

“Oh, _that’s_ right,” Knock Out glared between them both. “I forgot I’m dealing with a bunch of purists. No ‘’Con’ parts would _ever_ be _good_ enough for you, am I right?” he swung his gaze over to First Aid then, any trace of his former anxiety replaced with malice. “That reminds me: Did you ever fix your fa –,” but Knock Out stopped himself before he finished his sentence. First Aid looked terrified, whether it was of Knock Out himself, or what he was about to bring up, or Primus, now Knock Out realized, maybe his words had already triggered First Aid into another panic attack.

“I’m sorry,” Knock Out raised both hands to First Aid, suddenly aware of what he was doing, and First Aid’s look of fear turned to anger.

“You’re sorry because what you were _about_ to say is _extremely_ rude, isn’t it?” First Aid’s hands turned to fists at his side as he bristled with anger.

“Y-yes, it was. I mean it is. I’m sorry,” Knock Out immediately backed off, physically stepping away from First Aid.

Ratchet had been silently standing by, watching this little scene play out. Was Knock Out even aware that he was putting First Aid in a similar state of emotional distress that Ratchet had put _him_ in not five minutes ago? Or perhaps he was, and this was his way of regaining control of himself? But no, there was an unexpected apology, and then an equally unexpected response from First Aid. Ratchet could not recall the last time he’d seen First Aid anger to the point of even suggesting physical violence. The old Medic raised a metal brow, watching as Knock Out was so quickly intimidated into submission by the smaller bot. _Interesting._

With a sigh now that the drama had ended, Ratchet placed several items onto the slab before him. This whole defecting Deception thing was going to be the challenge of his life. He’d retire after this, he swore to Prime. If he pulled this off, he was going to retire. “Knock Out, come sit over here.”

Knock Out eyed the slab warily, not moving from where he stood, though he set the nearly-empty Energon container down. “Why?”

“I’m going to remove the stasis cuffs and we need to review your… _restrictions_ during these early days of your declared allegiance to us.”

The thought of having the cuffs removed sounded grand, but whatever else Ratchet was talking about did not. Still, Knock Out reluctantly stepped to the slab, finally getting a good look at the things Ratchet had placed there on a sterile tray: A large pair of tweezers, a laser scalpel, and a microchip still inside its sterile packaging. Knock Out’s red optics went wide. “What the f –”

“Ratchet?” Ultra Magnus ducked his head and two towering shoulders under the beam of the doorway to the medbay, pausing at the ramp as he blinked to the three. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were busy with a patient. I’ll come back later,” he quickly turned to leave.

“Oh no you don’t!” Ratchet turned and pointed a finger to Magnus, who had frozen in place at Ratchet’s words, despite the fact he outranked and outsized the Medic. “First Aid said you were in the comms room with Wheeljack.”

“That is correct, I was,” said Ultra Magnus, looking only slightly guilty at that admission. His massive red, white, and blue frame took up the entire entrance to the medbay.

“I’m quite certain I told you to remain in your hab suite until I released you as fit for duty.”

“Yes, you did.”

Ratchet threw both hands up into the air, giving Ultra Magnus a look of incredulity.

Knock Out swore he could see the gears turning in Ultra Magnus’s brain node as the big bot remained silent for a few seconds before speaking. “What Wheeljack is attempting to complete in the comms room is considered light duty that will have no bearing on my ability to recover.”

“That’s for _me_ to determine, Magnus! Not you!”

“I’m sorry, Ratchet, but there’s too much work to be done for me to be sitting idly by in my hab suite,” Ultra Magnus did look truly sorry that he had disobeyed Ratchet’s orders, but he also appeared to have made up his mind, orders or not.

Knock Out was watching all of this in disbelief at how wholly different the conversation was in comparison to any similar conversation he had ever had with any Decepticon. There was no name calling. No one was throwing things, punches or otherwise. No weapons had been drawn. Ultra Magnus had even genuinely _apologized_ for his actions. Knock Out didn’t know what to think.

“ _Fine_ ,” Ratchet growled. “Anyway, your timing is perfect. I was just about to explain to Knock Out what is to be expected of him during his…While he’s here with us...for the time being,” he turned back to Knock Out, and pointed to the slab. “Sit.”

Knock Out hesitantly obeyed, though he sat as far from the instruments laid out on the slab as possible, as though that would make a difference. Ratchet produced a key from his subspace and turned it in the lock on the stasis cuffs, finally removing them from Knock Out’s wrists. Knock Out couldn’t help but give an instantaneous stretch of both arms out to his sides and then behind his back, clasping his hands together there to pull his shoulders back. Primus, he’d been waiting a deca-cycle to do that.

“This,” Ratchet set the cuffs aside and was now opening the sterile pouch, “is an Inhibitor/Deterrence Chip (I/D Chip).” He pulled the tiny microchip from the pouch with the tweezers. “I’m going to connect this to your cranial stem.”

“ _What_!?” Knock Out gaped, looking highly insulted.

“Essentially,” Ratchet continued, ignoring Knock Out’s outburst as he picked up the laser scalpel with his other hand, “it’s a multi-functional tracking device.” Ratchet moved around the slab so that he stood behind and just to the side of Knock Out. “Hold still now, or I’m liable to cut through your spinal circuits.”

The thought of such a thing actually occurring was enough to make Knock Out go rigid. He was aware that Ultra Magnus had walked further into the medbay and was watching him, just waiting for him to jump up and make a break for it, no doubt. Knock Out knew that even in Ultra Magnus’s weakened state, the much larger bot could and would destroy him in a second. Knock Out gripped the edge of the slab with both hands as he felt the scalpel part the protometal at the base of his cranial frame and the alien sensation of the chip being forced under his plating. There was a resounding *click* noise as Ratchet snapped the chip into place. The wound that had been created to insert it at the back of Knock Out’s head was so small and so non-invasive it would autoheal in less than an hour.

Ratchet collected the tray from the slab and carried it over to the counter, setting it aside as he tapped on the data pad sitting there. “The GPS monitoring capabilities let any carrier of your I/DC Code (Inhibitor/Deterrence Chip Code) know exactly where you are at all times,” he cast the image on the data pad to the larger monitor that hung beside the slab Knock Out was sitting on. There on the screen was a glowing red dot on a topographical field of the immediate surroundings of the Nemesis. This startled Knock Out, not because anyone who had his I/DC Code would know his location, but because he hadn’t felt a thing when Ratchet had apparently activated the chip.

“The Inhibitor portion prevents you from using your altmode and built-in weaponry,” Ratchet continued. “Stand up,” Knock Out complied, eyeing Ratchet cautiously. “Now, try to transform.”

Knock Out moved away from the slab to give himself some room to do as asked, only when he attempted to engage his transformation cog, a horrible grinding noise emanated from his entire frame, every cog and spindle refusing to move at his command. It didn’t hurt, but the sound was enough to make him wince just the same.

“Now try your weapons,” Ratchet suggested.

Knock Out lifted both servos, his gaze darting from one to the other as he tried to draw his saw and drill, only to be met with the ‘click’ of his electrical systems firing to release the weapons within the hollows of his protoform, but the mechanisms never triggered. He tried multiple times, the rapid-fire *clickclickclick* sounds echoing in his forearms only further solidified the fact that he was now unable to defend himself. For a moment, his thoughts went to the extendible staff stored in his subspace, but then he recalled that Bumblebee had taken it from him weeks ago when he had first imprisoned him with the Vehicons before the final battle for Cybertron.

“And the Deterrence portion, well,” Ratchet did seem reluctant as he pressed his finger on the data pad, not that Knock Out was able to notice as a sudden sensation of burning heat ripped through his head. His vision went completely white, as though someone was shining the brightest light in existence right into his optics. He was not even aware that he had fallen to the floor until his vision returned, and he realized that he was completely paralyzed, unable to move of his own accord, though he was very much aware of Ratchet, who now crouched down on the floor to meet his unmoving gaze.

“Now you understand the Deterrence portion. You’ll remain in this stasis until someone with you ID/C Code releases your brain module from the command. If you try to remove or dismantle the I/D Chip in any way, it will activate this command and you will not be released until someone with the I/DC Code can correct it.”

Ratchet tapped a finger against the data pad in his hand before he rose back to his peds and Knock Out instantly felt in control of his own frame again. He winced as he pushed himself up from the floor, waving First Aid away as the smaller bot rushed to his side to help him up. He tried to refuse the assistance, but the ‘Deterrence portion’ had left him feeling queasy and unsteady on his peds, to say the least. In the end, he had no real choice but to let First Aid guide him back to the slab where he could sit down.

“Any questions?”

“No,” Knock Out rubbed the back of his head with a hand, still cringing as the pain subsided. “Wait…yes,” he looked to Ratchet. “Who has access to the I/DC Code?”

Ratchet set the data pad aside and now looked to his own arm as he opened a panel there, reviewing the tiny screen. “Myself, Bumblebee, Ultra Magnus…. Perhaps a few others as we see fit.”

“Wonderful,” Knock Out snarled. And this was supposed to be better than siding with the Decepticons how? “How long do I have to be subjected to this primordial form of supervision?” he glanced down to his knee and chest plates, muttering at the fresh scratches there from his unexpected contact with the floor.

“Until your trial,” Ultra Magnus answered before Ratchet could.

“My _what!_?” Knock Out quickly looked up to Ultra Magnus, forgetting his finish entirely. “ _Trial_!?”

“My apologies, I use the term loosely. ‘Tribunal’ is a better word. Think of it as an,” Ultra Magnus paused as he tried to come up with the correct term, “airing of grievances before a formed Council.”

“What about the Reintegration Act!?”

“That Act only applied to Decepticons who defected during the war and were thus given amnesty under Article Six Section Nine of the Autobot Code,” Ultra Magnus responded immediately, as though he had the entirety of the Autobot Code readily available in his memory banks.

“But I _did_ defect during the war!” Knock Out gaped at him.

“Knock Out,” Ratchet shook his head, “defecting the day before the war ends and declaring that you’re doing so ‘to be on the winning team’ is _not_ what the Reintegration Act was intended for.”

“But I’m here _now_!” Knock Out looked between Ratchet and Ultra Magnus, and then to First Aid, who had collected the container of Energon Knock Out had been consuming and was now pushing it back into Knock Out’s hands. The action startled Knock Out from the beginnings of his rant, so that he was forced to blink to First Aid. “What are you – Thank you, First Aid. Primus, you are still _way_ too nice. It’s distracting…. What was I saying?” He turned back to Ratchet and Ultra Magnus.

“That you’re here now, and yes, we all acknowledge that, and we acknowledge your contributions during the final days of the war,” Ultra Magnus said. “Those actions and the actions that you take from now on will help your cause when it comes time for you to face the Council.”

“ _What_ Council? Who’s even on this thing?”

“That is yet to be determined.”

“So, what? I just need to prove myself to you all? Is that it?” Knock Out looked from one Autobot to the other.

“In essence, yes,” Ultra Magnus nodded. “However, your actions of the present will be weighed against the actions of your past. You will have to make the persuasive argument that what you have to offer is greater to the Autobot cause than what you brought to the Decepticons during the war.”

“If the balance is not equal, you may be ordered to pay restitution,” Ratchet did not elaborate on that as he stepped back to Knock Out and gave him a quick scan with the data pad. “Finish the Energon, then help First Aid unlock the rest of the cupboards and containers in this room.”

Knock Out was carefully considering every bot’s words as he looked between them all. They wanted him to prove his loyalty? That was fine. _That_ was a game he could play and play well. He nodded to Ratchet and gave Ultra Magnus a final look of acknowledgement before he tossed back the rest of the Energon and set the container aside. “Let’s go, then. I can open everything, but the keys are in the safe in my office,” he pointed to the door at the end of the medbay.

“C’mon,” First Aid grabbed Knock Out by a hand and dragged him off the slab, eyeing Ultra Magnus and Ratchet as though they were suddenly the bad guys as he pulled Knock Out towards his office. Knock Out was surprised the smaller bot was again so willing to expose himself to any kind of physical contact with him, as though he had completely either forgotten or already forgave Knock Out for what he had said earlier. But Knock Out did not have time to question that as First Aid hauled him into the office. “Listen, Knock Out,” First Aid began as Knock Out crouched in front of the safe behind his old desk and started to turn the dial.

“I’m listening.”

“No, you’re not. Stop fidgeting with the dial and look at me,” First Aid’s tone was so commanding it surprised Knock Out into giving the Medic his full attention, his hand dropping from the dial on the safe as he turned to look at him, both brows raised.

“O…Okay? What is it?”

“This ‘trial’, or whatever they’re calling it? This whole balance of the scales slag that they’re talking about? You can’t mess it up, Knock Out. You have to play their game. You have to prove you’re willing to put the cause before yourself. You have to be _good_. You _can_ be good, can’t you?” First Aid did not look hopeful as he asked Knock Out the question.

Knock Out had to seriously consider the query before him, and he honestly looked inwards upon himself as he contemplated the answer. Could he be _good_? Could he put himself before others for the cause, for _any_ cause? He pondered it for only a moment before he laughed, smirking to First Aid with that same smugness the smaller Medic remembered from his time spent with Knock Out on his ship as they travelled from Cybertron to Earth all those years ago. “Of _course_ I can, First Aid. Have a little faith.”


	8. A Race

The Autobots were running into continual difficulties in their quest to restore their planet. They knew they had to start small, so the first order of business was simple: Spread the word. They had to find a way to tell every bot, off-world, in hiding underground, wherever anyone might have holed themselves up for the past four million years, they had to let them all know that the war was over. This was proving to be easier said than done.

Although the Well of AllSparks now glowed in the center of the planet again, on the surface, Cyberton was in a state of four million years’ worth of disrepair. They had not found a single building in close proximity to the Nemesis that was structurally sound and fit for habitation. There was no electricity, no sub-pumps, and only one signal coming from one of the six satellites that orbited the planet. The Bridging Portal had taken damage when Bulkhead had been forced to crash-land the Nemesis, resulting in a total loss of their ability to Jump off-world. The Portal was still able to sustain local Jumps, but with the Spacebridge temporarily out of commission, they had no way of returning to Earth, which meant there was no way to let Fowler or the children, Jack, Miko, and Rafael, know the outcome of their final battle against the Decepticons. Their many attempts to reach them via satellite communications had all failed.

 Everything needed to be fixed, and there were so few of them to do it. Thus, they had decided to focus all their energy on getting the comms working, so that, hopefully, when other bots arrived, they could assist in the rebuilding of their home.

Another deca-cycle came and went. The passage of time did not go swiftly for Knock Out. He was confined to his cell most days and every evening, though they did start giving him a daily ration of Energon, which was at least better than the deca-cycle prior. One day they even let him use a buffer for an hour, which was of course nowhere near long enough, but Bulkhead ripped it from his hands after exactly sixty minutes, despite all of Knock Out’s protesting and griping.

Knock Out briefly considered asking the Autobots if they would instead allow him to be confined to his personal quarters, but then he thought better of that. Perhaps it was best if the Autobots didn’t know the location of his quarters to begin with. He kept the idea to himself, for now, lest they decide to go snooping around in there without him present.

Occasionally, one ‘Bot or another would come by to escort him to the medbay to assist First Aid or Ratchet with some small task, though it was always something menial: Unlock this, enter the access code for that. They had him remove all of the Vehicon parts he’d amassed over the centuries and store them in one of the ship’s many supply docks. First Aid was always ridiculously kind. Ratchet was perpetually bitter.

It was clear to Knock Out and every other bot onboard that Ratchet was still not taking Optimus Prime’s death well. The old Medic always looked haggard and griped even more than usual. At night, he would lock himself away in his designated quarters, telling the others not to disturb him unless there was a medical emergency. No one was certain exactly what he was doing in there by himself. No one was brave enough to ask him.

Other than these brief outings, Knock Out had very little contact with anyone else, so it was with great surprise that early one morning, he awoke to the metallic clang of a hand against the side of his cell and saw Bumblebee standing on the other side of the glowing, orange bars.

“Good morning,” Bumblebee offered a faint smile down to Knock Out.

“Is it?” Knock Out pushed himself up off the slab as he focused on his internal chronometer. “Primus, Bumblebee, not even Sparklings get up this early,” then he blinked to the Autobot, becoming suddenly serious. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all. I came to ask you what you know about nanowave microfilaments.”

“Err,” Knock Out winced, rubbing a hand over his optics; it was too early for technical discussions. “You mean like what they use on the satellite arrays?”

“Yeah, that foil stuff they line the dishes with. Did Megatron have any of that onboard?” Bumblebee set his hands on his square hips, both brows raised to Knock Out.

“You checked the comms room?”

“Yes, twice.”

“And the supply bay in sector six?”

“Yup.”

 “Hmm,” Knock Out tried to recall where else Soundwave and his Vehicon minions would have stored such material.

“What about someplace else outside the ship? Any supply caches on the planet that you’re aware of?”

Knock Out shook his head, “No, not that I’m aware of. But Shockwave used nanowave microfilaments frequently in his research to insulate the...his experiments,” Knock Out eyed Bumblebee then quickly looked elsewhere. “He had several remote laboratories scattered around here. I’ve been to a couple of them, I could mark them on a map for you.”

“How about you take me there instead?” Bumblebee stepped to the side of the cell, tapping his fingers on the security panel, and the laserbars disappeared with a sizzle.

Knock Out blinked back to where the bars had been, suddenly aware of how quiet it was down there without their constant humming. “Really?” He was certain this was some sort of joke.

“Yeah, c’mon,” Bumblebee chuckled at the look Knock Out was giving him. “They’ve had you cooped up in here for an Earth month, now. Did you realize that?”

Knock Out’s face suddenly deadpanned as he raised a hand and pointed to one wall of the cell, where he’d been scratching a hashmark into the metal for each day he had been imprisoned there. The irony of being trapped on this ship even after he’d given himself over to the Autobots was just about killing him.

“Oh,” Bumblebee blinked to that, then turned back to Knock Out. “Of course you did. Sorry. Look, if I had my way, you wouldn’t be down here anymore. Let’s go,” he turned and waved for Knock Out to follow.

“ _Your_ way?” Knock Out started after him, more than happy to be leaving the cell. “I thought they put you in charge? I thought you were the new Commander?”

“I am, but certain issues still take a majority vote to implement a change.”

“Ahh, so I’m an ‘issue’ now?”

Bumblebee couldn’t tell whether Knock Out was insulted or amused. “You know that’s not how I meant it, Knock Out,” best to play it safe. Bumblebee lead them up the lift and out into one of the winding corridors that ended at the ground-level transportation bay.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Knock Out was quick to raise both hands. He didn’t want to screw this up by accidentally offending the Autobot Commander. “Majority rules. None of them mind this little excursion, though?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. I mean, I just asked Ultra Magnus a few minutes ago. While he was still half offline. Before his morning Energon. He said it was fine,” Bumblebee shrugged, waving the question off like he had everything taken care of. So what if he had asked Ultra Magnus the question about fifteen minutes after watching him pop a pain dampener to ease the discomfort from his slow-healing injuries? It’s not like those things had an effect on a bot’s ability to make rational decisions, or anything.

“If you say so,” Knock Out shrugged as well, then glanced around the hallway as they walked. “Speaking of morning Energon, I wouldn’t mind topping off before we head out. Also, if you let me access the navigation system, I can mark your map with the coordinates.”

“Sounds good,” they turned a corner, Bumblebee leading the way to the bridge, where the closest navigation terminal sat idle.

Knock Out slowed his steps as they moved across the catwalk that spanned the length of the bridge. It was completely empty, except for them. There were no Vehicon guards at the entrances and exits, no Starscream lurking in the shadows, no Megatron at the helm, his imposing form always the center of attention whether he wanted it or not.

At the navigation terminal, Knock Out stopped to blink at the screen, realizing that Soundwave would have normally be the one completing this task. And where was he now? Trapped in the Shadowzone, probably suffering alone, or perhaps dead already. Did Energon even exist in the Shadowzone? Is that how it would end for Soundwave, then? Starvation?

“Knock Out, are you okay?” Bumblebee’s voice suddenly broke Knock Out’s reverie and he blinked to the Autobot, wide-eyed for a moment before he frowned down to the control panel and began to type.

“Yes, I was just trying to remember if there were any other locations we could search.”

Bumblebee nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer before he moved past Knock Out and down the left side of the catwalk towards one of the side offices. “I think I saw some ration crates in here,” he disappeared into the smaller room.

Knock Out waited, watching the doorway for a few nanoklicks before he quickly turned back to the terminal, his fingers flying across the panel as he typed in several codes, giving himself access to the GPS beacons for each Decepticon Commanding Officer of the Nemesis. Although many of the comm systems were down on the ship, the GPS monitoring frequency was housed on its own dedicated server. With the broken comms, it wouldn’t be able to reach as far as say, Earth, anymore, but it could certainly scan Cyberton for any pings from a Decepticon receiver.

He watched on the screen as the animation of a white ring pulsed outwards from the ship’s current position on the planet. The ring grew slowly in size, reaching out in an ever-expanding circle across the topographical image of Cyberton. The larger the ring became, the further back the image pulled to expose more and more of the planet’s surface. In a matter of seconds, the entire planet had been scanned. Not a single hit registered, not even Knock Out’s own, and he recalled that his Decepticon GPS was currently being overridden by another, thanks to the I/D Chip. So, the Decepticons really _were_ no more.

At the sound of Bumblebee’s footsteps, Knock Out quickly closed the program, instantly wiping the map of any hint of detection capabilities, so that only the image of the planet remained. He narrowed his search window down to a section of the planet to the south of their current location and muttered a quick “thank you” when Bumblebee was close enough to offer him an Energon cube.

Taking a deep pull from the cube, Knock Out tapped a pointy digit on the screen. “We can start at this laboratory here, and if there’s no microfilaments at this location, the next closest one is about twenty klicks to the north, here,” he traced the same finger upwards. “There’s also another location here, and here, but this one, uhh…we should stay away from this one,” he tapped his finger on the screen, glancing to Bumblebee. “Last time I was there, Shockwave had just released one of his early Predacon experiments from its growth chamber and it ummm….Well, we had to collapse the entrance to keep it from escaping. Let’s just say it….wasn’t ready to be born. We had to seal it up inside there, and there’s no telling what it might have evolved into over the years.”

“Yikes,” Bumblebee made a face, “okay. Noted. We’ll start here,” he tapped the location Knock Out had mentioned first, “like you said.” He tossed back his cube, chugging it as though it were Engex. When he was finished, he moved to set the empty on a crate closer to the edge of the room.

Knock Out was not going to chug his breakfast like a Beastformer, but he did hurry to finish before adding his empty cube beside Bumblebee’s and trailing after him.

Together, they walked to the transport bay and down to the loading docks, using the side mech exit instead of opening the entire bay door. The moment the sun hit Knock Out’s face he closed his optics and drank in the rays as though his life depended on them. He gave a sharp intake, feeling the fresh air cleanse through his filters as he opened his optics again and surveyed the horizon. He didn’t even care that that planet’s surface was still scared and broken from millions of years of war, it was still a beautiful sight to behold.

Beside him, Bumblebee gave a little smile as he watched Knock Out appreciate his fresh surroundings, though a sudden pang of guilt struck the smile from his face, knowing that he was partially responsible for Knock Out still being confined to a cell. He promised himself he would try to be a better advocate for him when they returned.

“Alright,” Bumblebee transformed, his black autobody and the yellow stripe that ran down its center glinting in the sunlight as he gave his engines a quick rev. “Ready?”

“Ah,” Knock Out looked over to the muscle car, instantly jealous of the transformation, “I think you’re forgetting something,” he tapped a finger at the back of his head. “But if you insist on driving, I guess I’ll meet you there around noon,” he spread his arms wide in a shrug and started off on foot.

“Oh! Right, my bad. Hang on,” there was a pause before Bumblebee flashed his headlights at Knock Out. “Okay, I turned the chip off.”

Knock Out raised both brows, “Really? Just like that?”

“Just like that! Let’s go!”

Knock Out hesitated for a moment before he dared to transform, honestly surprised when he found he was actually able to do so. And Primus, it felt _so good_. It was like stretching a hundred muscles that hadn’t been allowed to flex in ages. For a moment, the red sports car simply idled before he opened his throttles wide, his engine roaring under his hood, as though he was clearing out a month’s worth of pent up energy. “Care to make this interesting?” he released his break and rolled forwards and then backwards again on his tires, clearly itching to drive.

“What do you mean?” Bumblebee had switched his vocalizer to his internal comm frequency over the rumble of Knock Out’s engines so that the other bot could hear him.

“How about a race?” Knock Out’s vocalizer bounced back towards Bumblebee.

“Hah! You’re on. No problem!”

“And the stakes?” The Aston Martin was already driving a slow circle around the Chevy Urbana.

“Stakes? Whadda you want?”

“ _When_ I win,” Knock Out stopped in front of Bumblebee, “I want the I/D Chip removed.”

“Knock Out, you know I can’t allow that without the others’ approval.”

“Alright, fine. _When_ I win, you agree to let me stay outside today for as long as I want. For the _entire_ day _and_ the evening, with the I/D Chip off. I’m sick of that cell and I’m sick of not being able to flex my wheels once in a while,” he rolled back and forth again. “ _And_ ….you let me do the same thing at least four times a stellar-cycle.”

“Alright, deal,” Bumblebee remained stationary, watching him. “And _when I_ win?”

“What do _you_ want?”

“When _I_ win,” Bumblebee mulled it over for a moment before replying, “you have to read the entire Autobot Code. The u _nabridged_ version.”

“Wha—It’s ten- _thousand_ pages!” Knock Out gasped.

“It sure is,” Bumblebee replied, and Knock Out could sense the smile under Bumblebee’s vocalizer.  “But what do you care? _You’re_ gonna win, right?”

“Exactly,” Knock Out reversed himself so that he was aimed in the direction they were headed. “Ready?”

Bumblebee quickly lined up beside him, so that their tires were perfectly aligned alongside one another. “On your mark…”

“Get set…”

“GO!”

Both sets of back tires screamed against the metal ground, the friction between the rubber and the hard surface sending hazy clouds of smoke into the air behind them before each vehicle lurched forwards at the same time, and they both sped off towards their intended destination.

They had not technically set a finish line, but that didn’t even matter to Knock Out. He was content to simply drive. Every time he squeezed the clutch and shifted gears a greater sense of freedom emanated from his spark. They headed south, quickly finding themselves on the outskirts of Iacon. With each having the destination marked on their respective internal maps, they could have separated and gone their own way in an attempt to outsmart the other, but neither wanted to let the other out of his sights, as the thrill of overtaking the other and leaving him in the dust was too much of an opportunity to pass up.

They drifted through every sharp turn and were so close together on the straightaways that not even a human could have fit between them. Their race led them onto the planet’s pre-existing highways, abandoned and empty for so many years. The road soon turned into Iacon’s famous Skyway, a series of elevated roadways that were built to cut down on the traffic and overpopulation of the city’s streets below.

The two sports cars flew across the raised platforms, their images a blur of red and black moving across the vacant road, the sounds of their engines there and gone before anyone observing would have realized what was happening.

Suddenly Bumblebee’s proximity alarms started to flash, his internal feed isolating an anomaly in the road up ahead. “Knock Out,” Bumblebee began to fall behind, “there’s a gap in the road.”

“You think I’m going to let that stop me?” Knock Out charged ahead, flooring his fuel pedal as he gathered even more speed, ignoring his own proximity alarms as he barreled towards the edge of the crack in the Skyway’s permacrete pavement. He found just the right spot to launch himself, his frame perfectly balanced as he soared through the air without a single tilt. All four tires slammed down onto the road as he cleared the gap, sparks flying as his rims momentarily ground against the underside of his wheel wells. There was a momentary loss of friction with the road as his back tires swerved to the left and right, but he quickly corrected himself and sped on.

“Frag,” Bumblebee muttered to himself, and he cringed as he gathered his own speed, choosing the same point to launch himself over the gap as he came up to it. His aerial vault was not as graceful as Knock Out’s, but he stuck the landing much better, and it was there that he was able to make up for enough time to regain his momentum and come up alongside Knock Out once more.

They drifted around another turn when Knock Out was forced to brake hard to avoid some debris that had fallen from one of the crumbling buildings that now loomed over the Skyway as they made their way deeper into the city proper. Cursing, Knock Out maneuvered himself behind Bumblebee as the other bot pulled ahead on the cleaner track, cringing as he was forced to ride in the wake of his dust.

Bumblebee took this opportunity to really open himself up. He positively flew down the narrow straightaway, the distance between himself and Knock Out growing wider and wider as he increased his speed. He dared to adjust his rearview mirror to eye the red sports car growing smaller and smaller behind him, but that momentary glance was all it took for him to miss the gigantic pothole in front of him that had opened up in the road through millions of years of acid rain and rust.

His right front tire dropping into the hole, Bumblebee’s undercarriage slammed down into the metallic pavement, his forward momentum causing his back end to spin around to the front as he tried and failed to correct his course. His entire frame went spinning three-hundred-and-sixty degrees before his tire finally lifted out of the hole, his autobody now sliding backwards into the guardrail of the elevated roadway. Like so many other spots on the Skyway, the guardrail’s strength had broken down over millions of years of neglect, and the weakened rivets broke instantly under Bumblebee’s weight, sending him sinking backwards off the edge of the bridge to the streets below.

Knock Out watched this entire display, and he felt Bumblebee’s EM field reaching out to his own in a panic as he went slipping over the side. Knock Out zipped past the hole in the guardrails, aware of the sounds of Bumblebee transforming below him as he sped on. He was not at all concerned about Bumblebee’s fall. Iacon engineers had been careful to make the height of the Skyway safety-compliant. Most bots could fall off the edge and survive, even if they landed on their heads.

It was Knock Out’s first inclination to laugh at the spectacle and keep on driving, thrilled beyond belief that the rest of the day was now his to do with as he pleased. He had big plans to simply drive around like a maniac until they forced him back into his cage or he completely wore himself out, and he was pretty sure the latter wouldn’t happen. He cackled over the comms to Bumblebee as he pressed on towards their destination. “I _told_ you I’d win, silly ‘Bot. You shouldn’t have even tried to—Bee?” Knock Out slowed his pace as only silence greeted him over their two-way comm channel.

“Bumblebee?” Knock Out tried again, coming to a complete stop on the roadway. No response greeted his call.

Internally, Knock Out glared as he performed a two-point turn and backtracked, coming to a stop near the hole in the guardrail.  “If this is some kind of joke to get me to lose, I swear to Primus…” he transformed, walking to the edge and peering over the side. About fifty meters below, he spotted Bumblebee in his mech form. He was half expecting the Autobot to wave up and him and laugh before transforming and taking off to their destination on a new path, but that was not the scene that he was met with at all. The Autobot Commander was completely still, his gaze wide and fixated upward, a thick metal support strut that had rusted away from the underside of the Skyway skewered him clean through his torso.

Knock Out’s spark dropped into his peds. “Oh slag.”


	9. A Wrecker's Revenge

“Slag,” Knock Out backed away from the guardrail, frantically searching for a safer way down than hurling himself over the edge. There, from the direction they’d come from, was an exit ramp. He quickly transformed, speeding to the ramp and down it to the second level of the Skyway. From there he could safely jump to the ground level, which he did after transforming again. He rushed from the road to the stacks of rubble and metal where the Autobot was sprawled.

Bumblebee’s body lay draped over the fallen metal beams from the Skyway, his back arched at an unnatural angle, the metal beam protruding from his torso was so wide it threated to rip him in two if he made any sudden movements. Luckily, it appeared the shock of the situation had rendered him motionless, for the time being.

Knock Out was already diagnosing Bumblebee’s medical needs as he hurried to the Autobot’s side, his internal feed full of calculations and possible remedies as he scanned Bumblebee’s form, as well as the size and angle of the girder. It never even occurred to him that this was the perfect opportunity to make a break for it. It never even occurred to him that he didn’t _have_ to offer Bumblebee assistance, that he could have simply stood by and watched the Autobot Commander bleed to death. Truthfully, his initial response was a knee-jerk reaction as his secondary programing kicked in upon seeing a mech in distress; Knock Out’s brain node couldn’t help but analyze the situation and start immediately offering up suggestions on how to fix it. That didn’t mean he was forced to _act_ on those suggestions, but he did anyway.

“Bumblebee, are you functioning?” Knock Out moved to Bumblebee’s side, placing a hand under the Autobot’s head to peer into his optics with his own. “Can you hear me?”

“Y…..es,” Bumblebee’s optics, previously a dull grey, suddenly flickered back to life with the faint pulse of a blue glow.

“Bumblebee, listen to me: Can you call for a Groundbridge? They never gave me the frequency,” Knock Out never broke eye-contact with him. “Bumblebee, call for a Groundbridge. Call for help. Do it _right now_.” He watched as Bumblebee’s optics refocused, hopefully on his HUD to follow the orders Knock Out was giving him. Knock Out waited only a few moments before speaking again. “Bumblebee, did you call for the Groundbridge?” He made certain to repeat the Autobot’s name and the directions he was giving, frequently. He wasn’t satisfied until Bumblebee gave a nod of confirmation.

“Alright, listen,” Knock Out eyed the pillar protruding from Bumblebee’s gut, “I’m going to remove you from the column, but when I do, you’re going to start losing Energon, rapidly,” he looked back to Bumblebee’s face, the bot’s blue optics now wide with horror.  “The important thing is to follow my instructions and _don’t_ panic. Panicking will only make it worse. Do you understand?” Knock Out waited until Bumblebee gave another nod of his head, then he transformed his right hand into that massive buzz saw he kept hidden under his armor and protoform, the one that had earned him the title “The Bloody Butcher” from Autobots and Decepticons alike.

“Good, hang on,” Knock Out shifted his stance, the sudden whine of the spinning saw blade causing Bumblebee to cringe. Pressing the whirling teeth of the saw against the metal beam, Knock Out cringed as well as hot orange sparks flew out in all directions as metal ground against metal. He did his best to keep his own form between the shower of metal flecks and Bumblebee’s prone figure, but the angle made it difficult, and his saw was built to slice through bots, not solid metal structures. He had to lean all of his weight into the saw blade; at one point the saw jammed and became stuck halfway through the cut, forcing Knock Out to lean back and jerk his arm back and forth at the elbow in an attempt to free the blade from between the sliced metal. Eventually, he was able to cut the beam in half a few inches above the hole in Bumblebee’s waist. He would definitely have to replace the blade after that spectacular feat, but that was the least of his worries as he shoved the sliced beam with a shoulder, causing it to tilt and fall away from the pile of wreckage Bumblebee was laying on.

“Are you still with me?” Knock Out transformed the saw back into a hand with the flick of his wrist, leaning closer to Bumblebee’s face and frowning when he saw the bot’s optics flickering. “Hey. Hey! Bumblebee!” he gripped the bot’s head in both hands, giving him a little shake, which caused his blue optics to light up once more. “Stay awake! You hear me?”

“Yes…” Bumblebee’s vocalizer was barely a whisper.

“Good bot,” Knock Out moved back to Bumblebee’s lower half as he inspected the damage. He took only a few seconds to tabulate the probabilities of Bumblebee’s survival if he decided to try and remove him from the girder, then he started to pop open several panels on his own chassis, removing from his subspace several pincer clips, electrical and foil tape, and from deep within a hidden panel that even Bumblebee himself had missed when he had forced Knock Out to empty his subspaces of all weapons, a mini soldering gun. Knock Out set all of these things within servo’s reach, then he very carefully braced his arms under Bumblebee’s frame at his chest and legs.

“Primus, you’re heavier than you look,” Knock Out groaned as he strained to lift Bumblebee’s frame clear of the metal beam. The rush of Energon that suddenly flowed from Bumblebee’s gut completely drenched the ground between Knock Out’s peds as he quickly lifted Bumblebee from the metal strut and onto the flat surface beside the pile of debris. Knock Out grabbed all of the supplies he’d laid out seconds earlier and got to work.

“Well, it didn’t sever your spinal strut,” Knock Out almost laughed at Bumblebee’s good fortune there as he reached his hands right into the wound, pulling from the leaking hole a mess of spurting and crushed fuel lines. “You are one seriously lucky bot. Give me your servo,” Bumblebee weakly offered his hand to Knock Out, and the former ‘Con quickly laced the spurting gut lines through Bumblebee’s fingers. “Now make a fist…Tight…Tighter,” Knock Out watched as Bumblebee flexed his fingers, effectively squeezing off the lines and stemming the flow of Energon long enough for Knock Out to apply the clips to each bent line.

“That’s it,” Knock Out quickly grabbed foil tape, wrapping each end of each line between Bumblebee’s fingers before he reached for the soldering gun and fired it up, touching it to each of the leaking, foil-taped lines. It was only a quick fix, enough to hold back the dripping Energon for about five minutes, but Bumblebee didn’t need to know that. Knock Out was halfway through soldering each line before he noticed Bumblebee’s grasp starting to slacken. He paused in his work, glancing to Bumblebee’s face and taking instant note of the wide optics and the sudden tremors that shook the Autobot’s body. Knock Out quickly grabbed Bumblebee by the chin, leaning close to his face as he spoke. “Bumblebee, I said no panicking, remember? You’re doing fine. Keep making a fist. Pretend you’ve got Megatron by the throat,” he glanced back to Bumblebee’s hand, watching it instantly flex again. “There! That’s much better. Just keep doing that,” he set back to soldering and clamping each sputtering line as quickly as he could, but silently he worried that it wouldn’t be fast enough.

“Knock Out,” Bumblebee suddenly coughed through his vocalizer, and Knock Out inwardly cringed at the sight of blue Energon leaking from the corner of the Autobot’s mouth. “Knock Out…I think….I…”

“You think you’re a better choice for Commander than Ultra Magnus?” Knock Out quickly stole the conversation from Bumblebee before he could finish the sentence.  “I agree. You have a way of compelling mechs to do your bidding, or whatever the Autobot equivalent of that is. That’s Ultra Magnus’s problem, he has no tact, and no personality to make up for it.” Knock Out soldered as many broken and bleeding lines as he could with his limited supplies, then set the mini gun aside, hunching his shoulders as he peered deeper into Bumblebee’s wound. “Alright, this is going to sound horrible, but I need to drill a hole in your manifold, or your intake is going to flood. You’re probably feeling pressure on your right side, yes? That’s because the coolant you’re leaking has nowhere to go, so we need to release it.”

Unbeknownst to Bumblebee, Knock Out had his own left arm behind his back as he transformed his hand into a massive drill bit. Knock Out was very aware of the terror the weapon could cause, even when he intended to use it to save a life instead of taking it (who cares if that wasn’t very often?), so he kept it hidden from Bumblebee. “This is going to hurt but relieving the pressure will feel better than the tiny hole I’m about to make, you see? Bumblebee, do you understand what I’m saying?”

Bumblebee opened his mouth to reply, Knock Out heard Bumblebee’s vocalizer click on, but instead of words, a staticky cough rattled from his voice box. Bumblebee turned his head to the side as a thin stream of Energon spluttered from his mouth between his hacking and coughing, and Knock Out fought back his own panic as he watched Bumblebee struggle.

Knock Out had always been careful to leave his EM field out of his work, if he could help it. He was, unknowingly, the exact opposite of First Aid in that regard. In nearly any medical emergency, he could shut it off like a switch and focus on the task at hand, especially in those real life-or-death moments where every second counted. But occasionally, he would reach out with it, sometimes to get a better reading on a patient’s ailment, sometimes when he knew in his spark that it was likely a patient wasn’t going to survive, to try and offer one last comforting signature before they deactivated for good. He realized it was a pathetic gesture, trying to console anyone who was dying, especially if they themselves were aware and were not going gracefully or quietly. Still, he could only reason that if it were him in their situation, he would be glad to know at that least _someone_ had cared, even if it was just for those few seconds before his spark went out. Granted, this was not something he made an effort to do for just anyone. To be certain, he had been more than happy to watch some bots die, and gladly offered no consolation to many of them. If that made him cruel, so be it. Some bots deserved to die. Not this bot, though.

Knock Out dared to extend the edges of his EM field out to Bumblebee, trying his best to express feelings of calm and comfort while simultaneously masking his own growing fear that if they did not get the injured bot back to the Nemesis within the next three klicks, he was not going to make it. “Hang on, Bee. Just hang on, we’re almost done. The Groundbridge will open up any moment, and we can get you to Ratchet,” _Primus, where the frag is the Groundbridge!?_ Knock Out grit his denta as he turned back to the hole in Bumblebee’s midsection and gently aligned the tip of the drill against the Autobot’s exposed manifold. He was careful to turn the motor of the drill over slowly, so that the bit only rotated twice, the sharp tip poking the smallest of holes through the delicate inner-platings of Bumblebee’s systems.

A stream of green coolant instantly spilled from the puncture wound as Knock Out pulled the drill back. “Once we’ve got you stabilized, we can get you back to the Nemesis and…Oh, thank Primus,” Knock Out looked skyward, saying a quick prayer to the Primes as he heard the Groundbridge finally open directly behind them. He turned around, glancing over his shoulder to the glowing portal as the shape of a mech came into view. He didn’t even care which Autobot it was, only that they had a direct link back to the ship. “Took you long enough! Listen to me! We need to….Wheeljack? What are you – “

Knock Out’s first reaction upon seeing Wheeljack aim the rocket launcher at him was utter disbelief, not in that Wheeljack would fire upon him, but that Wheeljack would fire upon him when he was in such close range to Bumblebee, as though the rocket blast would somehow be able to discern one bot from the other. His second reaction, even as his proximity alarms flared wildly at the edges of his internal feed, was to turn back towards Bumblebee and brace his own frame over the fallen Autobot as he attempted to duck out of the way of the incoming missile, since there was no time or place to make a jump for it. If it just so happened that his actions made it appear that he was attempting to shield Bumblebee from the blast, well, no one could say he wasn’t giving his all to try and save the Autobot Commander. 

 

“Has anyone seen Bee?” Arcee asked of Bulkhead and Wheeljack, who jointly sat at their makeshift dining table with their Energon cubes that morning. Smokescreen, as usual, had overslept. “We were supposed to go looking for nanowave microfilaments today.”

“Naw, I haven’t,” Bulkhead shook his head between sips from his cube.

Suddenly an ambulance went racing by the open bay door, emergency lights flashing and illuminating the hallway with red and blue colors. There was a screech of tires against the ship’s metal flooring, the distinct mechanical modulations of a transformation, and then First Aid came running around the corner into the room where Arcee, Wheeljack, and Bulkhead sat. He stared wide-eyed at them all as his vents tried to catch up with his movements.

“Knock Out’s missing from his cell.”

“That fragging piece of slag, I _knew_ he was lying!” Wheeljack was the first to jump up from the table and start for the exit.

“Jackie, wait!” Bulkhead stood as well. “What if Bee took him outta there?”

“Why the frag would he do that!?”

“I dunno! I’m just sayin’!” Bulkhead glared to Wheeljack. “Maybe we shouldn’t assume the worst!”

“Are you _joking_!?” Wheeljack glared right back. “Not assume the worst from _Knock Out_!? Bulk, don’t tell me you’ve been believin’ his slag all this time!”

“Of _course_ not! I just think that –”

Every single one of them suddenly froze as Bumblebee’s hail chimed over their internal emergency frequencies. It was a simple message, sent with a set of coordinates: “Groundbridge. Knock Out. Help.”

Wheeljack’s vocalizer growled deep within his voice box as he turned and stalked towards First Aid, pointing a finger to the small Medic. “Activate his I/D Chip, _now_!”

“I...I don’t have access! Only Ratchet, Magnus and Bee do!” First Aid pushed himself up against the side of the doorframe as Wheeljack neared. The Wrecker had always intimidated him, whether Wheeljack meant to do that or not.

“Well then go get Ratchet or Magnus and tell them!” Wheeljack yelled, then stepped into the corridor, where he quickly transformed into his sleek sportscar altmode. “I’m Bridgin’ to those coordinates. That little glitch is _mine_ ,” then he sped off down the hallway. He hit up the arms room first, skidding to a halt in front of the entrance and transforming back into botmode before opening the door and rushing inside. His hands were just setting down on one of the rocket launchers when First Aid’s voice squeaked over his internal comms.

“It’s not working! Wheeljack, Ratchet says the I/D Chip isn’t working! It’s shut off!”

“Figures,” Wheeljack muttered his response into his internal comm as he grabbed the rocket launcher and hauled aft towards the transportation bay. He had warned them, _all_ of them, not to trust Knock Out. The mech was a Decepticon, for Prime’s sake, but that wasn’t even the half of it. Wheeljack never divulged more information than he had to in order to back up his claims that Knock Out was sure to betray them at some point, he knew he wouldn’t have to. He knew the Decepticon would show his true colors eventually, and honestly, he wasn’t surprised it had only taken a few deca-cycles for that to happen. He’d been secretly looking forward to this day, when he could finally destroy the self-centered mech that had managed to lure Breakdown away from the Wreckers for good.

Ratchet and Bulkhead were already in the transportation bay when Wheeljack arrived, Ratchet punching the coordinates into the Groundbridge and pulling the handles downwards as the portal flared to life. The old Medic flipped open a data screen along his forearm, tapping a finger at the monitor.

“I don’t know what the hell he did,” Ratchet shook his head as he stared down at the panel screen, “but I can’t activate the chip. It’s like he shut the entire signal down, or maybe he’s too far away? It _does_ have a limited range, you know.”

“Don’t worry, I got this,” Wheeljack said with a grin, hefting the rocket launcher onto one of his shoulders as he started into the portal, giving a quick look to Bulkhead as he passed him by. “C’mon, Bulk. It’s time for a little Wrecker revenge, wouldn’t ya say?”

Bulkhead was apprehensive about this emergency mission, but as he caught Wheeljack’s eye and extended his EM field, he instantly understood and identified the other Wrecker’s emotions: Anger, betrayal, grief. Revenge. _Yes_ , Breakdown certainly deserved revenge, and finally the opportunity had presented itself.

“I’m right behind you, Jackie,” Bulkhead nodded to his oldest friend, quickly transforming one of his hands into a massive mace as he followed after Wheeljack through the Groundbridge.

 

For Bumblebee, time had slowed to a crawl the second his wheels had skidded off the Skyway. He had fully expected to survive the fall, no problem. He’d fallen from greater heights and survived, so when he suddenly found himself impaled by a roadway pillar instead of landing on his peds, he honestly did not believe it was real. It wasn’t until Knock Out was suddenly beside him that he realized the seriousness of the situation, and then he was consumed with the thought of how royally he had just screwed everything up.

Then the pain hit him. It started in his torso and began to creep its way up into his chest.  He was aware Knock Out was speaking to him, but the words didn’t make sense, as though the pain was the only thing his systems would process. Bumblebee’s blue optics widened as Knock Out was suddenly right there, inches from his face, staring down at him with those ‘Con-red optics that Bumblebee noted were quite mesmerizing up close. Knock Out’s words became clearer, then. _Call for Groundbridge. Help_. It was enough to momentarily steer Bumblebee away from the pain and concentrate on the command he was being ordered to follow.

Bumblebee’s visual of Knock Out’s face faded into the background as he refocused on his internal display, gathering their coordinates and sending back to the Autobots what he thought was a complete and detailed message of exactly what had transpired. In his mind, he had put together an entire dialogue of the events leading up to his fall and his current medical emergency and sent the data packet back to every ‘Bot on the Nemesis. He did not realize how simple and ominous the final message actually was. Bumblebee also did not realize that an hour ago, when he had deactivated Knock Out’s I/D Chip, he had deactivated the Inhibitor, the Deterrent, _and_ the GPS tracker. And Ratchet, back on the Nemesis, was right: Only Bumblebee’s I/DC Code was within range of Knock Out to reactivate it again.

Bumblebee was now only vaguely aware another lifeform was there beside him. There were more words being spoken, he might have even replied to something, but he was no longer sure what the question was. The pain had returned full-force, and it was beginning to consume him. He heard the whine of a saw blade and the grinding of metal on metal, noises which for some reason reminded him of a conversation he’d had with Raf about human mouth doctors and their use of power tools. If he remembered correctly, most children feared the mouth doctor, and with good reason.

Alerts kept popping up all around the edges of his HUD. So many things were broken and leaking, and there was nothing he could do about it. He set them all on ignore, although he could do nothing to remove the red icons that continued to flash in warning just off to the side of his visual field, where his system forced him to store them all, lest he attempt to forget about them.

It felt like hours had gone by between the time Bumblebee had fallen and now, as he felt arms lifting him upwards and the immense amount of pain that quickly followed. He knew Knock Out was telling him something, and he was abruptly aware of the other bot’s hands _inside_ him, tugging at tubes and lines with his pointy fingers. The sensations made that morning’s Energon rise in his throat, and he was certain he would have purged his tanks right then had Knock Out not said the magic word: Megatron. Both of Bumblebee’s hands to clench into tight fists as the mech’s very name, and for a moment the anger that rose from within him was so strong he managed a few seconds of clarity before the pain brought him down again.

Then there was a sudden disassociation from the pain, and Bumblebee could feel his mind wandering away from reality, like it was seeking an escape from the pain it knew existed there if it decided to remain.  It occurred to Bumblebee then that he was dying. He was not unfamiliar with the sensation; this was not the first time he had felt his spark begin to falter. He thought it necessary to warn Knock Out of this realization as it came to him, but the dumb red mech would not shut up long enough for him to finish his sentence. Figures.

A sharp pressure had been growing in his right side, and now it felt as though it was going to smother him. He tried to tell Knock Out, completely unaware that the other bot was at that moment drilling a hole into his inner-chassis, but his words were lost as the Energon that had threatened to come back up earlier finally did, and he struggled to clear it from his vocalizer.

Then, just like that, the pressure was gone, and a new sensation caught his attention as he felt Knock Out’s EM field brush delicately against his own. It was oddly soothing, though Bumblebee, even in his current state, could pick up on the other, lesser signatures behind the initial burst: Pity. Fear. Guilt. Sadness?

His throat now clear, Bumblebee rest his vocalizer to try and speak again as he attempted to focus his optics on Knock Out, but his gaze was torn from the red bot as the aqua glow of the Groundbridge suddenly swirled into existence just off to his right. From the portal charged Wheeljack, who paused at its edge only long enough to take a knee and fire the rocket launcher perched on his shoulder.

From Bumblebee’s position on the ground, it appeared as though Wheeljack was firing the rocket _at him._ What the frag _was_ this, mutiny!? Bumblebee scarcely had time to shield his face with an arm and shrink away as he heard the fuse of the rocket tear open the air as the projectile launched. He turned just in time to take note of Knock Out all but flattening himself over Bumblebee’s own frame, and that was the last image he had before the explosion rocked his sensors offline.

 

As Wheeljack rushed out the other side of the Groundbridge into the outskirts of Iacon, he saw only one thing: A Decepticon wielding a gigantic drill, hovering over his Commander who was bleeding out through a massive hole in his gut. The Wrecker took one look at the scene before him and leveled the rocket launcher onto Knock Out’s form, squeezing the trigger before the ‘Con could speak another word.

Wheeljack had aimed the weapon squarely on Knock Out’s frame, but even as the rocket left its chamber, Wheeljack saw Knock Out attempt to duck at the last second, and he knew the hit would not be as direct as he would have liked.

Bulkhead, whose heavier frame forever had him at least three steps behind Wheeljack at all times, emerged from the Groundbridge right as the missile struck Knock Out under his left shoulder wheel. The instantaneous explosion triggered by the impact sent sharp pieces of red armor plating flying in all directions. Bulkhead cringed and lifted a huge arm to protect himself as bits of metal and tire treads momentarily rained down from the sky above him. When he finally lowered his arm and looked up, only Bumblebee’s body lay on the ground, his optics grey and lightless. Knock Out was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you _insane_!?” Bulkhead roared to Wheeljack, anger swelling up inside him at his friend’s recklessness.

“You know I am,” Wheeljack said as he quickly slung the launcher over his back and rushed towards Bumblebee’s prone form.

“You shot _right_ at Bee! You could have _killed_ him!” Bulkhead lumbered after him as quickly as his frame would allow.

“Knock Out was already attemptin’ ta do that! I had ta stop ‘im!” Wheeljack crouched down beside Bumblebee, wincing at the sight of the bloody torso wound. “Frag, look what he _did_! Bee?” he placed a hand against Bumblebee’s face, searching his lifeless gaze. He did not for a second believe that Bumblebee was offline due to his close proximity to the impact of the rocket. No, this was clearly Knock Out’s doing. “C’mon, we’re getting’ you outta here,” Wheeljack began to shift his arms under Bumblebee’s back, then paused, glaring up to Bulkhead, who was just standing there beside him. “Hey, are you gonna help, or what!?”

Bulkhead had never been quick to process things, so it took him a minute to analyze the situation. He slowly glanced from Bumblebee and the hole in his frame, to the rusted metal beam jutting from the mound of crumbled permacrete freshly streaked with Energon, then he tilted his head back as he turned his gaze up towards the Skyway ramp bridging above them, a marked gap in the guardrails just above their current position. Any other bot might have put everything together then, but Bulkhead had to retrace the visual steps back down towards Bumblebee before it clicked.

“Oh slag,” Bulkhead finally spoke, turning to Wheeljack, “slag, Jackie, Knock Out wasn’t trying to kill him, he was trying to _help_ him! I think Bee mighta fallen off the bridge!” he pointed upwards, but Wheeljack didn’t even bother to look.

“ _Now_ who’s insane!?” Wheeljack had managed to lift Bumblebee’s frame up by himself and was already heading towards the open portal of the Groundbridge. “No worries, Bulk! I got ‘im, don’t help _me_ out or anything!” He could not believe Bulkhead was yet again taking Knock Out’s side, or that he was even suggesting the ‘Con might have come to Bumblebee’s aid. But that was fine. When they got back to the ship, Wheeljack would be sure to take a moment to make Bulkhead see things _his_ way, the _Wrecker_ way.

“We need to find Knock Out’s body,” Bulkhead called after Wheeljack, though he was already moving away from the puddle of Energon where Bumblebee had been laying, scanning the nearby terrain for any signs of Knock Out’s form. He knew his assumption about what had really transpired here was correct, and despite his great dislike for Knock Out, he knew that if he left the mech’s frame out here, it would haunt him for the rest of his days. Even Optimus would have made sure to bury the frame of his dead enemy if he knew that enemy’s dying act had been an attempt to save Bumblebee’s life.

“It’s blown to bits, man! Ain’t nuthin’ left!” Wheeljack yelled over his shoulder, then glanced down as his left foot came to rest on the edge of a piece of plating from Knock Out’s forearm, the purple crisscrossed patterns nearly invisible under black scorch marks. He kicked the piece of metal aside, inwardly smirking for a moment, though his anger at Bulkhead kept him from outwardly smiling. “I’m goin’ back before our _leader_ dies in my servos. Thanks fer comin’ along to assist,” he sarcastically snapped back to Bulkhead before disappearing into the spinning vortex of the Groundbridge.

Bulkhead shook his head, saying nothing as he listed to the Groundbridge swallow Wheeljack up. He turned his full attention back towards the terrain, attempting to predict the course and velocity of the rocket from where Wheeljack had fired it, and what sort of trajectory Knock Out’s body might have taken based on the impact and explosion. His heavy-footed steps lead him under the Skyway, and he stood in its shadow, optics narrowed as he slowly surveyed the area, shifting his focus inward to his HUD as he scanned for heat signatures. Finally, some fifteen yards away, the green silhouette of a still form registered on his internal screen.

As he neared the body on the ground, Bulkhead was surprised to find Knock Out’s frame as complete as he was. Somehow, he hadn’t been torn in half by the force of the explosion and had managed to keep all his limbs intact, save for his left arm. When the projectile exploded, it had ripped off the tire, axel, pauldrons, the ball-and-socket joint and all of the surrounding armor plating, leaving the left side of Knock Out’s chest and back a twisted mess of bare frame and leaking fluids.

Bulkhead took a brief glance around for the missing arm, but it was nowhere in sight. Not that it would matter much whether he found it or not, since Bulkhead was fairly certain Knock Out was one with the Allspark now. He leaned down and scooped Knock Out’s body up with both hands. The former ‘Con was surprisingly light, although with a missing arm, Bulkhead supposed that was to be expected. There was no reaction from Knock Out as he was picked up, and Bulkhead saw no red glow from his optics or biolights, nor any glow from the now exposed spark casing from Knock Out’s inner chassis.

“So, this is how it ends, huh?” Bulkhead peered down at the much smaller bot in his arms. He was not sure how to feel about Knock Out’s death, in light of the recent discovery that he had been trying to save Bumblebee. Did such an act really make up for all the millions of years of slag the little bastard had caused? “Hmmm,” Bulkhead shook his head and started back towards the Groundbridge, Knock Out’s remaining arm swinging slightly with Bulkhead’s swaying walk, “Well, tell Breakdown ‘hello’ for me, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on units of time:
> 
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	10. A Light

“What in the _Pit_ happened!?” Ratchet and First Aid had prepped the medbay as soon as Wheeljack went through the Groundbridge after Bumblebee’s message on the emergency frequency. Although Ratchet had been expecting to treat some injuries, he had not been expecting those injuries to be quite so serious. His spark sank when he saw Wheeljack carrying the newly-appointed Commander down the ramp of the medbay, Energon dripping from the gaping hole in his frame.

“I stepped outta the Bridge an’ there was Knock Out, drillin’ into his guts!” Wheeljack rushed down the ramp, his own frame streaked with Bumblebee’s Energon and coolant fluids.

“Primus above…Put him here,” Ratchet tapped the nearest medslab with a hand, then grabbed a data pad from a nearby counter and tapped the screen with a finger. “First Aid, start him on an Energon line while I get his readings.”

“Right away,” First Aid jumped into action immediately to follow Ratchet’s orders, though he gave a quick glance to Wheeljack when he could afford to do so. “Wheeljack, Knock Out really did this?”

“He was right there beside Bee with his fraggin’ drill _literally_ inside him!” Wheeljack had stepped away from the slab once he set Bumblebee’s frame down and backed away to let the pair work. ”Dun worry, though, that lil glitch ain’t comin’ back from where I sent ‘im,” he said with a smirk.

First Aid did not have a chance to read Wheeljack’s EM field, as he was too preoccupied with prepping Bumblebee for surgery as quickly as he could. “What did you do?”

“I shot ‘im with the rocket, of course! Like I said, dun worry,” Wheeljack waved him off, moving to the counters and picking up a saturation pad to start wiping the blue liquid from his servos. “All that’s left of his fraggin’ aft is scrap metal.”

First Aid finally did look up, whipping head around to Wheeljack, “You _killed_ him!?”

“Of _course_ I killed him! Look at what he did to Bee, to our Commander!” Wheeljack gestured to the fallen bot with a hand again, his eyes narrowing on First Aid.

First Aid shook his head, glaring himself now as he turned his attention back to Bumblebee’s arm, where he was securing the Energon line. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Knock Out would do this.”

“What?” Wheeljack yelled from where he stood. “Hey, frag you, mech! You’re taking that glitch’s side _too_ now!?”

“Wheeljack is right, Knock Out did do this,” said Ratchet, who had set the data pad aside and was now closely inspecting Bumblebee’s wound. “Look here at these welds, and the foiltape, and this hole in his manifold to drain the coolant from his intake,” his analysis sent an injury report scrolling down across his HUD. “This is a puncture wound,” Ratchet gestured to the large hole in Bumblebee’s frame. “Look at the way the sides of the protoplating protrude upwards and out at a ninety-degree angle,” he picked up the data pad again, entering his findings and sending the results to the larger monitor beside the medslab where Bumblebee lay.

First Aid reviewed the information on the monitor, then moved to get a closer look at the wound himself. “You mean something happened to Bee and Knock Out was trying to—”

“Save him? Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” Bulkhead’s rotund frame suddenly appeared at the entrance to the medbay, Knock Out’s lifeless form dangling from his arms. The bright red color of Knock Out’s armor had already faded into a dull, pinkish grey.

Wheeljack stopped cleaning the Energon from his frame the second he spotted Bulkhead, his momentary happiness at seeing the other bot instantly vanishing when he realized what he was carrying. “What the frag? You brought his dead aft _back_ here!?”

“ _I_ think Bee fell off the Skyway, got impaled on one’a the broken support beams, an’ Knock Out was tryin’ to save him,” Bulkhead scowled to Wheeljack as he thumped down the ramp to an empty medslab and draped Knock Out’s still body onto it. He then turned to Wheeljack again, stepping closer as he pointed a fat finger at him, his own hands and arms equally coated in Energon. “And then you shot him for it.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Wheeljack always did enjoy using alien vulgarities. He could swear in roughly three-thousand galactic dialects. “How did you even come up with such a ridiculous idea!?”

“Because I’m a fragging Structural Engineer an’ I know how to put two and two together!” Bulkhead now towered over Wheeljack as he ripped the saturation pad from Wheeljack’s hands so he could use it himself.

“Please!” Ratchet hollered at them both from where he stood beside Bumblebee’s medslab “I’m thankful you brought them back, BOTH of them, but First Aid and I need to work without you two bickering in the background!”

“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help, Doc,” Bulkhead nodded and turned, starting back up the ramp as he continued to wipe Energon from his frame. ”C’mon, Jackie.” Wheeljack muttered something about Decepticons and followed after him.

“Nothing is stable,” First Aid watched several lines of Bumblebee’s vital signs ticking erratically across the monitor, though he’d given a quick glance to Wheeljack’s back as the two Wreckers departed.

Ratchet was hurriedly pulling tools from one of the drawers at the countertops that surrounded the room and setting them on a tray.  “Inject three more ounces of petrograde into his oil pump and then we can start trying to reconnect his fuel lines. Primus, what a mess,” Ratchet shook his head as he laid out the tools. He did _not_ need this stress right now. None of them did. If Bumblebee died, he was not sure how they would recover from the loss of yet another beloved member of their team.

“I can’t believe Wheeljack actually killed him,” First Aid gave a glance to Knock Out’s body on the medslab across the room, and Ratchet was honestly surprised by the genuine sorrow he heard in the bot’s voice. First Aid looked back to the CMO. “Shouldn’t we make sure he’s really offline instead of taking Bulkhead’s word for it? I can run over there real quick and—”

“You need to focus on the mech that’s still barely alive right now, or you might find yourself in the position of not believing _two_ bots are dead,” Ratchet frowned to First Aid as he tugged the tray of tools up to the side of Bumblebee’s medslab. He did not look over to Knock Out’s frame. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He _did_. A little. But he knew all of his energy and attention needed to be focused on Bumblebee, and he could not spare First Aid’s assistance in the matter. “Push ten microliters of neurex saturate and monitor his vitals. I’m going to try and reconnect some of the major lines first, then we’ll move into the smaller tubes and go from there _. Understand_?”

First Aid winced a bit at the harsh undertones of Ratchet’s words, but he nodded all the same, turning back to the task at hand. He pushed back the feeling of sadness that momentarily creeped up into his circuits and frowned back to Bumblebee on the medlsab beneath him. Ratchet was right. Two dead bots were worse than one. “Yes, Sir.”

 

“Guys, what _happened_!?” Arcee rushed towards Bulkhead and Wheeljack as the pair stepped from the medbay and out into the connecting corridor where Arcee and Smokescreen stood waiting for any updates on Bumblebee’s condition. They all knew better than to step into Ratchet’s workspace when he was busy. “Is Bee gonna be okay!?”

“He fell off the Skyway that leads to Iacon an’ landed on a broken girder,” Bulkhead shook his head as he continued to wipe Knock Out’s spilled Energon from his hands. “It looks…pretty bad.”

“You don’t _know_ that, Bulk!” Wheeljack said, pointing a finger to Bulkhead.  “Stop lyin’ when you dunno the truth!”

“You don’t know the truth _either_! Did you see the hole in the guardrail above our heads!?” Bulkhead pointed upwards with a finger, as though they still stood below the Skyway. “Did you see the huge metal beam with Bee’s Energon all down the sides!? He _clearly_ fell onto it! Knock Out was trying to help him! Even Ratchet said—”

Wheeljack was quick to interrupt. “Explain why his I/D Chip was off, then!”

“Bee musta shut it off?” Bulkhead paused for a moment, then shrugged his wide shoulders. “Knock Out was able to transform his weapons, so…”

“Yeah, his _weapons_ , which he was using to skewer Bee!”

“He was using them to _help_ Bee! Ratchet said—”

“I dun give a _frag_ what Ratchet said!” The rage emanating from Wheeljack’s EM field suddenly pulsed through the entire corridor. He stalked towards Bulkhead, still pointing a finger. “ _He_ didn’t see Knock Out drilling holes into Bee’s frame! I fragging _told_ you keeping that ‘Con here was a mistake! I told _all_ of you!” At that, Wheeljack turned to point at Arcee and Smokescreen, who had both been standing silently by, their gaze darting back and forth between the two Wreckers as they hollered at one another. “Didn’t I _say_ he was gonna try some slag one’a these days? Well, here we are! That fragging glitch had you _all_ believing he was gonna be one of us and _look what happened_!”

Smokescreen was very aware that Wheeljack was not a mech to be messed with. He had always done his best to give the bot a wide berth any time Wheeljack decided to grace Team Prime with his presence, because he was quite certain the Wrecker could hand Smokescreen’s aft to him if he ever felt like it. It wasn’t that Wheeljack had ever even threated Smokescreen with violence, but the younger mech had always gotten the sense that Wheejack _could_ , if he was ever pushed too far. Smokescreen completely understood why Ultra Magnus had always been so reluctant to allow Wheeljack to work with Team Prime, the bot was the definition of “loose cannon”. This anger, though, this rage filling up the hallway and imposing itself on everyone else’s EM fields was something different. Smokescreen had never seen Wheeljack so geared up. He dared to ask a question.

“Why do you hate Knock Out so much? I mean….I get it. I get that he’s a ‘Con, I know he’s harmed us in the past, but he _did_ help us in the end back there. And if what Bulkhead says is true –”

“Yer too young, kid,” Wheeljack waved him off. “You dunno how far back the slag goes with that fragger, what he’s done, the _lives_ he’s ruined,” he made a fist with a hand, gritting his denta plates as he glared at the floor, clearly lost in the recalls his processor was filtering out.

“Jackie,” Bulkhead sighed, trying again to reason with Wheeljack, “he was trying to save Bee. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Even if he was, so _what_? That’s supposed to absolve him of all his past wrongdoings?” Wheeljack turned his anger back to Bulkhead, pointing that accusing finger again. “I dunno how the frag it happen, but the war made you _soft_ , Bulk. I think all that time with Optimus and all of his righteous ‘’Til All Are One’ holier-than-thou vibes got to your brain node.”

“Don’t you _dare_ talk about Optimus that way!” A wave of fury that rivaled Wheeljack’s suddenly emanated from Bulkhead’s EM field, the signature so strong that both Arcee and Smokescreen instinctively took several steps away from the giant green bot.

“Or _what_?” Wheeljack stepped into the raging EM field of Bulkhead, as though challenging him to act on it.  “You’ll take a swing at me? Please do! Give me a reason to kick some sense back into your neural circuits!” He pounded a fist into his open palm, glaring up at Bulkhead. If he had to fight his best friend to knock some sense into him, he would.

“That’s _enough_!” Ultra Magnus had rounded the corner just in time to see Wheeljack stepping to Bulkhead, and he immediately moved to position himself between the two bots; he towered over both of them. His sensors quickly analyzed the charged EM fields being thrown back and forth between the pair and he narrowed his gaze on Wheeljack, whom he assumed was the instigator in all of this. In his experience, Wheeljack was _always_ the instigator. He leveled his gaze on the explosives expert. “Why don’t you go take a drive.”

Wheeljack snarled up at Ultra Magnus, one hand still clenched in a fist as he pointed to Bulkhead with the other. “He’s—"

“That’s an _order_ , Soldier,” Ultra Magnus was quick to speak, not letting Wheeljack get another word into this argument. He was _not_ in the mood for quelling arguments today. Deca-cycles had passed and he still felt like slag, despite Ratchet’s best efforts. He knew he should have been following the CMO’s orders more closely, but what he had said to Ratchet in the medbay weeks ago was true: There was simply too much to be done, and too few bots to do it. So, he was sacrificing his health to ensure their current mission was completed. He did not mind this. What he _did_ mind was mechs with attitudes who liked to start slag whenever they could.

Ultra Magnus maintained a hard gaze on Wheeljack, their optics locked on one another as they stared each other down. This was hardly the first time the two of them had engaged in a staring contest that involved so much more than simply breaking eye-contact. This little game had been playing out between them, over and over, for centuries. Ultra Magnus knew that all he had to do was wait, hold Wheeljack’s gaze, and he would “win”. He _always_ “won”. The real joke was that the game they had been playing all these years was all in Wheeljack’s head. All Ultra Magnus ever had to do was stand imposingly in front of Wheeljack, regardless of the issue, and Wheeljack would yield. Why the Wrecker felt the need to play this game time and time again, Ultra Magnus did not know, but he played along just the same.

Wheeljack held the gaze of Ultra Magnus for a few silent clicks before he suddenly scoffed, waving a hand to the much bigger bot as he walked past him in the corridor. “Psh, ain’t no one a _Soldier_ when there’s no _war_ bein’ fought anymore, _Sir_ ,” he snapped back to Ultra Magnus before transforming into his altmode and laying rubber to the floor of the Nemesis, screeching away from the other Autobots.

Ultra Magnus shook his head as he watched Wheeljack go, then glanced back to Bulkhead. On to more important matters. “Will Bumblebee survive?”

 

“This spark flicker is getting worse,” First Aid turned from the monitor and the data streams bouncing across it to Ratchet, who was still struggling to piece Bumblebee’s frame back together. First Aid looked to the screen once more as an alarm suddenly chimed from the console. “Damn, there go his power cells. I’m losing him, Ratchet!”

“Okay,” Ratchet immediately pulled his hands free from Bumblebee’s wound, tossing the tools he’d been working with aside as he looked to the monitor now as well. “Put him on direct spark-support and increase the neurex saturate by an additional ten microliters.”

First Aid was quick to follow the orders, only to have his own spark sink when Bumblebee’s frame was completely unresponsive to the treatment. “It’s not working!”

Ratchet cursed, taking one step to his left to grab a mobile cart and drag it over to the medslab. He quickly pulled the cables from the cart and moved to attach the ends to Bumblebee’s power cells. “Readying the reboot coils. Try using flash-flame, but if that doesn’t work, this is our last option. Come on, Bumblebee…”

 

Suddenly, they were back on the Skyway, the black and yellow Chevy Urbana and the red Aston Martin side by side as they raced towards the selected laboratory to the south of the Nemesis. As though both mechs came to the same realization at the same time, both of them slowed to a stop together, each silent save for the hum of their engines before they both transformed. They stared at one another, both uncertain of what they had just experienced.

“Didn’t you just –” Knock Out began, pointing to the guardrail.

“I….I thought I did?” Bumblebee looked to the edge of the Skyway, where no hole existed. “You saw that, right?” he blinked back to Knock Out. “I thought I fell? It _felt_ like I fell!”

“You did! I _watched_ you go over! You were skewered by that gigantic rebar!” Knock Out quickly inspected Bumblebee’s frame, but there was not a mark on him. He glanced back up to Bumblebee’s face, utterly confused. “I thought you were dying. I mean, you _were_ dying! I wasn’t going to say it right then and there, but—“

“I thought so too …I _felt_ it,” Bumblebee looked down to his hole-free torso as well, then gave Knock Out a look of panic. “What the frag was all that, then? Was it a dream? A vision?” It had all seemed so real to him only seconds ago, yet here they were, standing on the Skyway completely unharmed. None of it made any sense. “What the frag?”

“I don’t know,” Knock Out mirrored Bumblebee’s concern, but suddenly he narrowed his gaze, looking to their surroundings of ruined buildings and crumbling infrastructure as several possibilities ran through his processors. “Perhaps someone or some _thing_ is trying to mess with our heads.”

“You’re here?” came a sudden voice from behind them.

Both Bumblebee and Knock Out whipped their heads towards the voice at the same time, both mechs raising their arms, ready to form weapons, though what they saw gave them pause. Knock Out froze, optics wide, but Bumblebee let out a gasp, so startled and taken aback that he actually grabbed ahold of Knock Out’s right arm to steady himself.

There before them stood Optimus Prime.

Neither bot had heard him make any sort of entrance; there had been no sounds from his land-based altmode, no aerial swoop of turbo engines to announce his landing. He was just _there_ , standing mere meters from the pair.

“You’re here?” Optimus repeated the question as he moved to close the distance between them, looking from one bot to the other. “Both of you?”

“Optimus,” Bumblebee’s spark felt like it would burst from his chest plates. The surge of joy and relief that swelled up inside him upon seeing Optimus Prime was almost too much to bear. “You’re alive!?” He almost laughed at the words as he started forward to meet him half-way.

“Wait!” Knock Out grabbed Bumblebee by the arm, digging his heels in as he tugged Bumblebee back towards himself. “It could be a trap!”

Optimus Prime stopped in his tracks when Knock Out moved, his expression shifting from a small smile to reveal sadness. “No, I am not alive. And neither, I am sorry to say, are either of you, or we would not be on this plane of existence together.”

“Okay, this is some kind of trap for _sure_ ,” Knock Out turned his back to the decidedly not-real-Prime, his narrowed gaze scanning the skeletal frames of the skyscrapers that surrounded them for whoever was responsible for this ruse. He shouted out to the empty, dilapidated landscape. “Come on out and show yourself like a _real_ mech!”

“What?” Bumblebee stared at Optimus, ignoring Knock Out’s hollering beside him. He knew this was no trap or vision or whatever the hell it was they had just experienced. He had encountered a not-real-Prime before, while his consciousness was searching Megatron’s mind for a cure for Cybonic plague to save Optimus himself. The Prime that stood before him now was very real, at least, as real as any of them were in the current reality they were standing in. “We’re….dead?” Bumblebee looked from Optimus Prime back towards the guardrail where he’d fallen through seemingly moments before. “You mean that fall…?”

“I’m afraid so,” Optimus looked to the edge of the Skyway as well, frowning as he contemplated the situation.

“Wait,” Knock Out finally turned back to the other two, as cursing at the bombed-out buildings had accomplished nothing, “did you say we’re _dead!_?” he gave a look of disbelief to Optimus Prime, then pointed to Bumblebee. “I get why _he’s_ dead, but why am _I_ dead!?”

“Wheeljack’s rocket,” said Optimus, though he did not turn to look at Knock Out as he said it. His blue gaze was focused elsewhere, as though he might be reading data from his internal systems.

“That _killed_ me!? That little piece of— “

“I did not expect to see you here, either of you, for a very long time,” Optimus continued. “Something must be wrong,” he continued to stare out towards the ruins of Iacon, his head tilting ever-so-slightly, as though he were trying to listen to a sound neither of the other two bots could hear.

“Dead already?” Bumblebee had dropped his gaze from Optimus as the realization began to sink in, his door wings slowly drooping downwards. “But…we’d barely gotten started rebuilding the planet…No one had even shown up yet!”

“I can’t be _dead_!” Knock Out raged beside Bumblebee, his hands clenched into fists as he glared to Optimus Prime, like it was all his fault they were there.  “I survived four million years of war and in the end, I get scrapped by _Wheeljack_!?”

Bumblebee suddenly glanced up and over to Knock Out with a look of complete guilt. “Oh my God, I’m _so_ sorry! This whole trip was _my_ idea! If I hadn’t fallen off the edge—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Knock Out rolled his eyes then shook his head, giving Bumblebee the same guilt-ridden look. “It was _my_ idea to race. _I’m_ the one that should be apologizing. No,” then his glare returned, and so did his fists, “ _Wheeljack_ should be apologizing! I am gonna haunt the _slag_ out of him!”

“Whoa, you think we can _do_ that? I don’t know if—" Bumblebee cut himself short as Optimus Prime again caught their attention, the Prime’s hands outstretched to both bots. Again, they had not heard him approach; his footfalls had not rattled the bridge they stood on, he was just suddenly there, beside them. In each of his upturned palms, he held a glowing sliver of golden light that shone so brightly it illuminated all their faces and armor plating. Bumblebee blinked from both the brightness and the surprise of this offering before he looked up to Optimus Prime’s face. It was then that he noticed that Prime’s chest plates and spark chamber stood open, the doors to his literal soul revealing his own golden spark, which existed within him despite his presence in this apparent realm of death. “Optimus…what..?”

“Take one,” Optimus said, his gaze slowly moving from Bumblebee to Knock Out. “Each of you, take one.”

“Optimus,” Bumblebee swallowed hard, panic starting to blossom within him, “I thought you said the Matrix was— “

“Ohh no,” Knock Out took a step back from the light, shaking his head furiously. “Nononono, I’m not _touching_ that! You can’t force that kind of responsibility on me!” he quickly ducked behind Bumblebee, physically maneuvering the other bot’s frame between himself and Optimus’s hands. Let Bumblebee be a Prime, he _wanted_ to be a leader of bots, Knock Out did not. He never had, and never would. Let him be CMO in some medical unit somewhere, that was the only aspiration he’d ever really had.

“These are not from the Matrix of Leadership,” Optimus did not move, his hands still outstretched. “You are correct, Bumblebee, the Matrix is no more. What I am offering to you will not make you a Prime.”

Bumblebee held his ground, raising a hand to shield his optics from the overwhelming light. “What are they, then?”

“A second chance,” Optimus said, still watching the pair.

Knock Out slowly peeked out from behind Bumblebee’s door wing, giving the offerings in Optimus’s hands a wary look. This all sounded too good to be true. “What’s the catch? There’s _always_ a catch.”

Optimus gave a quiet, sighing vent and nodded. “If you accept this offer, there are those who exist that will recognize you have accepted it. They will sense the difference in your spark, and they will seek to destroy you for it to obtain its power.”

“This sounds pretty similar to the Matrix,” Bumblebee now eyed Optimus warily as well. “What power does it...do _they_ hold?”

“I do not know,” Optimus shook his head, “But, unlike the Matrix, it will be a shared power, not only among you two, but among others who now live that were also given this second chance.”

“Who?” Bumblebee blinked to that. “Bots we know?”

“I cannot say,” said Optimus.

Knock Out had stepped out from behind Bumblebee now, daring to take a closer look, but at Optimus’s words, his armor plating wilted. “When you say that….that there are those who will know the difference, and will come looking to kill us, you mean Decepticons, don’t you.” Who else would seek to destroy a spark with a different signature than their own? Who else would kill to gain power from another?

“No,” Optimus Prime shook his head slightly, “those that can recognize the spark signature are not of our race. I am unable to elaborate more than that, as I do not know their kind, myself.”

Bumblebee glanced to Knock Out at that with lifted brows. What other beings existed in the universe that could recognize a spark signature, let alone read one accurately?

“So,” Knock Out looked from the slivers of light to Optimus, “damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.”

“Why didn’t you take this for yourself, Optimus?” Bumblebee suddenly shook his head and raised a hand waving the offer away. “Take it and go back to them, to everyone else! We _need_ you! _They_ need you!”

“I cannot accept these gifts, I can only give them.”

“Is there no one else here to offer you one? You’re here all alone, then?” Bumblebee looked sparkbroken at the thought.

“No,” Optimus Prime smiled down to Bumblebee; he had missed his favorite scout who was forever looking out for his well-being, even in death, “I am not alone.”

A sudden realization hit Knock Out like a punch in the faceplates. They were dead. This was the afterlife, if such a thing existed, and apparently it did. Optimus said he was not alone, which meant there were others here as well, and if _that_ was the case…

Knock Out suddenly straightened up, red optics wide as he started to scan the surrounding area. Surely if any bot was expected to greet him here, it would be Breakdown. Knock Out could not contain the surge of hope and excitement his EM field projected onto the other two as he took a step away from them, ready to go search for Breakdown for as long as it took to find him.

“He’s not here, Knock Out,” Optimus watched the red mech start to wander away, only to pause at the words and look back, complete disappointment marring his features. Optimus felt the projected EM field pop like a bubble.

“He…he’s not?” Knock Out moved back beside Bumblebee, clearly shocked at what Optimus had just said. “Then, where is he? Where _else_ would he be?”

“Not in this realm,” Optimus Prime offered a smile, though he knew it would do nothing to alleviate Knock Out’s distress.

Knock Out’s shoulders slumped, his gaze locked on no particular spot on the horizon. If Breakdown was not here, then what other realm could he possibly be in? Knock Out had come across plenty of bots during the war who believed in other realms, and not all of those realms had pleasant descriptions. What if all of that slag had been true, and Breakdown was trapped in some horrible Pit of a place because whatever or whoever ruled over their creation and death had deemed him unworthy of someplace better? But then another realization crossed Knock Out’s processors: The Well of AllSparks. What if Breakdown’s spark was released amongst the others that evening? Knock Out was not sure why he had not considered the possibility before, but then again, no bot had ever proven that _all_ sparks were “reborn” through the Well, despite its famous name. Even if Breakdown was, what was the guarantee he would recognize Knock Out, or even be the same mech, with the same personality? Knock Out had never really believed any of that religious nonsense to begin with. There was too much resting on faith and “space magic” and not enough scientific evidence to back up any of the claims.

If Breakdown was not in this realm, and Knock Out _did_ believe Optimus Prime when he said that, then perhaps the offering Optimus was making was worth the risk? The second Knock Out came to that realization, he was startled by the feeling of his chest plates shifting open of their own accord, followed by the parting of the rigid metal doors of his protoform to expose his spark chamber housed beneath. Knock Out blinked, peering down into the chamber as best he could. Where a reddish hue normally glowed strongly from within his frame, now the light was so small his optics could barely detect it within the darkness of his spark chamber. His mind automatically jumped to all of the emergency medical procedures he ought to be doing to try and save himself, as though he were not looking at his own dying spark, but at some other bot’s on a slab in his medbay.

Knock Out finally turned back towards the others, his look of bewilderment remaining when he saw that Bumblebee, too, stood with his own chest plates and spark chamber bared wide, only the tiniest pinpoint of yellow light emanating from his frame’s metal housing.

Bumblebee stood frozen for a moment, trying to sort out the emotions that were crashing through his processor. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to stay there with Optimus. He had not mentioned it to the other ‘Bots, but he had felt incredibly lost since the day Optimus gave himself to Well. He knew many of the others were struggling just the same, particularly Ratchet, and so he did not want to burden them with his grief on top of their own. It had been a hard thing to keep to himself, and now that he was Commander, it was even more important for him to show strength and the will to carry on despite their significant loss.

But it was killing him. Every morning he would come back online and the reality of life without Optimus Prime would stab him in the spark all over again, and it was all he could do to get up from his berth and walk out of his quarters to greet the others with a cheerful attitude, try to keep them all in good spirits, and convince them to forage ahead for the greater good of their planet and race.

All of these thoughts and emotions washed over Bumblebee as he returned Knock Out’s anxious gaze, and he could not help the tears of optic cleanser that suddenly leaked from his eyes as he turned back to Optimus Prime, who simply smiled down to him as he always had, with that face that always convinced him everything was going to be alright.

“Optimus,” Bumblebee began, but he could not find the words.

“I would say to both of you that you need to make a decision,” the Prime looked between the two of them, “but it appears your sparks have made it for you.” He took a step closer, his hands still outstretched. “Take them. Take the Light. Go back and finish what we started. I know you will make me proud.”

Knock Out blinked from Optimus to Bumblebee. Were they seriously going to do this? He could see the same questioning look in Bumblebee’s optics as the other met his gaze. Then as though they were one, both bots reluctantly reached for the shining slivers with shaking hands. When they grasped the light, they could each feel the tiny spots of their remaining sparks flare to life, a sudden, physical sensation guiding their light-filled hands towards their chests, pulling it towards them as though the slivers of light _belonged_ within their spark chambers.

When sliver and spark at last met within them, the explosion of light and raw energy was all-consuming. Each bot’s head was thrown back, their optics and mouths open wide to scream from the combined feelings of pain and power that ripped through their frames as life was restored to them, but their vocalizers were silenced and their optics blinded by the light as beams of it shot out from these openings as well. So it was that they were able to hear Optimus Prime’s final words to them, before they were once again returned to darkness:

“Remember: I am always with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added chapter names, because why not?
> 
> Notes on units of time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	11. A Vision

Knock Out stood in a large room that he did not recognize. The ceiling was high and vaulted at the top, the floor below his peds was made of concrete of the Earthen variety. Looking down, he slowly took a step backwards, moving aside to remove his peds from the stencils of red paint on the floor’s surface, which he now realized made up the Autobot symbol. He blinked back up, taking note of the catwalks and railings that lined the edges of the wide room. In one corner stood a Groundbridge, in another, a makeshift medbay.

“C’mon, throw it! You’ve got a clear shot!” Knock Out turned back around at the small voice that was shouting at him from one of the catwalks up above, and his gaze came to rest on the tiny human waving at him from between the metal bars of the railing as he stood amongst the other human children. It was Bumblebee’s pet, Rafael.

“Throw it, Bee!” Rafael yelled again, gesturing to Knock Out with both hands. Knock Out looked down, now aware of the gigantic metal ball he held between his servos. He knew it was a lob ball, but he had no idea why he was holding it, or why Rafael expected him to throw it. Primus knows Knock Out did _not_ enjoy sports, especially if they involved teamwork, or heavy metal objects being thrown at your faceplates.

“Bumblebee! Quit hogging the ball!” Bulkhead’s voice boomed over the voices of the shouting kids, and Knock Out started to turn around, only to freeze in place as another voice spoke, a voice he was all too familiar with. The voice issued a command, and he instantly obeyed without a second thought.

**_“Silence him.”_ **

Knock Out turned and violently whipped the lob ball towards Bulkhead, whose large frame somehow managed to dodge the spherical piece of welded scrap metal. The ball slammed into the cavernous rocky wall of the hangar-like room, the sphere momentarily stuck into the Earth before it dropped to the floor with a solid *clang!*.

“Hey! The hoop is _that_ way!” Bulkhead glared, pointing to the makeshift metal hoop that hung several meters above their heads.

Knock Out was just about to open his mouth to respond, when suddenly he found himself in a completely different location. Now he was sitting on the edge of a berth in a much smaller room, a hab suite. The place was sparse for decorations, although he noted that on the single shelf that ran along one wall there were various human trinkets: A bicycle with only one tire, a computer monitor, an entire barbecue grill, minus the propane tank. It was an odd collection of junk and Knock Out could not understand the appeal of any of the items. He began to push himself up from the berth, only to pause once more as the voice returned, the one he knew so well, and he immediately obeyed.

**_“Sit. We are not through, yet,”_** Megatron’s voice growled from within Knock Out’s head, as though it spoke into his audials from the _inside out_ , and not from the outside in. **_“Tomorrow, you will access the Groundbridge and take me to the following coordinates,”_** Knock Out startled as his internal readout displayed the latitude and longitude of an Earth location. “ ** _There, you will locate the remaining shard of Dark Energon and together we will return to the Nemesis so that I may reclaim my body.”_**

“The hell I will!” Knock Out yelled to the empty room, quickly standing in defiance of the voice’s previous order to sit. “We’re not going _anywhere_ except to Ratchet to tell him what’s going on!” Knock Out started for the hab suite door, but suddenly the room seemed to go dark. Disoriented, he tried to increase the light output from his optics and turn on the high-beams of his chest plates, but neither could pierce the darkness that Megatron was using to cloud his mind.

**_“You think so, little Scout?_** ” from the darkness, two red optics suddenly opened wide. They were right in Knock Out’s face, and he reeled away from them, but nothing he did, physically, would put distance between himself and the burning red gaze. **_“You will do as I say, or I will take your mind like I took your voice.”_**

“Get the frag outta my head!” Knock Out cringed, slapping his hands over his optics as he shuttered them and tried to shake Megatron from his brain module.

**_“Oh, but I will! As soon as I have my own body back. So, you see, you have very good reason to assist me.”_ **

“No! I won’t help you!” Knock Out did not realize he had crumpled to floor and was now gripping his head between both hands. It did not matter if he opened his optics or shuttered them, Megatron’s piercing gaze remained.

**_“Bumblebee, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. If you choose the easy way, all you need to do is obey my orders. If you choose the hard way, well, I can do this on my own.”_** Suddenly the red orbs invading Knock Out’s mind disappeared, and his normal field of vision returned. The floor was mere inches from his face as he sat, hunched over beside the berth, but suddenly he felt himself rising to stand, the movement of his body completely out of his control. **_“You know where your little pet human lives, don’t you?”_** Megatron’s voice rumbled in his audials and Knock Out watched as his internal directory brought up Rafael’s home address on his HUD. **_“Hmm, not far at all. Perhaps we should pay him a visit?”_**

Knock Out struggled to regain control of frame. He fought with every ounce of willpower he could muster simply to try and force himself to sit back down on the berth, but it was no use. His legs moved of their own accord toward the hab suite door as his right servo transformed into his circular saw, the disc spinning a few rotations despite his best efforts to keep it from revolving. **_“Or perhaps we could go see Ratchet as you suggest?”_**

Knock Out spotted his reflection in the full-length yet still small human-sized mirror that hung on the wall to his left, and he inwardly cringed as his frame turned towards it, stalking over to it so that he could stare at his face. His saw his saw blade slowly rise up to his neck, the teeth settling gently against the cables gathered there. **_“Maybe we should just give it all up, eh, Bumblebee? Ahh, but then we would both perish. Do you think it’s worth it?”_** Megatron laughed, but now Knock Out’s mouth moved in unison with the laughter, and Megatron’s voice emanated from his voice box. **_“Would you do it, Scout? Would you make the ultimate sacrifice for your fellow Autobots?”_** Knock Out pushed the blade up under his own chin, his red optics glaring at his own reflection in the mirror as his mouth continued to move.

**_“Go on! Regain control of yourself and finish this war! It can all end here, tonight! All you have to do is reclaim your body from my possession,”_** Knock Out laughed, watching himself, the saw blade pressing deeper against his throat even though in his mind, he was struggling to pull it away. It was no use, he could not force Megatron to relinquish his frame.

A sudden chill washed over Knock Out at the realization that Megatron had been able to break his will so easily. He had been struggling so hard to push Megatron from his mind, but even his best efforts were completely ineffective. He was so disappointed with himself. He thought he would have been stronger than that, he thought he would have been able to resist and that his willpower was solid under such adversity, but Megatron seemed completely unphased.

**_“You’re too weak,”_** Knock Out’s frame shook as he laughed at the words coming out of his mouth, and his body turned back towards the berth, the saw blade twisting and flipping backwards as it was replaced by his hand. **_“Don’t be ashamed… Your weakness is to be expected, considering your allegiance.”_** Knock Out felt his frame being forced to lie back down onto the berth, but as he stared up at the ceiling, tendrils of darkness clouded his gaze once more, and the penetrating red optics again appeared before him.

**_“So, you see, Bumblebee, it is in your best interest to simply do as I command. Because at the end of the cycle, you really have no say in the matter,”_** Knock Out still could not move his frame. Megatron’s will had him pinned to the berth. Knock Out struggled for a few more seconds before finally giving up, and he felt like a complete failure for doing so. Another wave of humility washed over him at the fact that his resolve could falter so easily, and he could just imagine what the others would say if they knew how quickly he had given in. 

**_“Now,”_** the red optics closed, leaving Knock Out in darkness, despite the fact that his own optics were wide open, ** _“how about a little story before we power down for the evening? Do you remember the Simanzi Massacre of the 1 st Cycle 3178? I’d wager you’ve never heard the retelling of that famous battle from the Decepticon perspective.” _**Thousands of images suddenly began to flood Knock Out’s mind as Megatron’s psyche imbedded his memories of the infamous battle into Knock Out’s own databanks. The recalls Megatron was forcing upon him all played before his optics like a film reel: Fields of dead and dying bots, Autobot and Decepticon alike, that stretched for miles; A mech Knock Out did not recognize, his frame severed in two, Energon and inner tubing tumbling out from his lower chassis, screaming before a massive silvery ped came slamming down on top of him, Megatron’s foot silencing his cries; Rows of Autobots on their knees, hands cuffed behind their backs as their Decepticon captors walked the lines and systematically blew their heads off with laser pistols and stabbed through their chests into their sparks with electrified spears.

In one scene that flashed before Knock Out’s optics, an imposing silhouette of Fortress Maximus, red eyes blazing as he glared downwards, leveled the barrel of his massive firearm on Knock Out and fired mere seconds after Knock Out apparently had the sensibility to leap out of the way. The impact and explosion of the round sent mech body parts scattering in all directions. Knock Out looked down to the spot he had landed, only to realize that the ground was littered with dead frames that had, from the looks of them, been there for centuries. It was as though they were locked in the same battle on the same piece of land for eternity.

Megatron continued to force these images from his memory of the Simanzi Massacre into Knock Out’s memory until dawn. Every time Knock Out tried to power down, to escape the scenes of hell Megatron was subjecting him to, he could feel Megatron’s will forcing itself deeper into his brain module.

By the time Knock Out managed to stumble over to Ratchet and beg the Autobot Medic to put him into stasis that morning in a fleeting moment of clarity, he was ready to put a bullet in his head, if only Megatron would have released his frame so that he could do so.

The brief respite caused by the induced stasis had not lasted long. Knock Out would go on that day to follow Megatron’s orders. He Bridged back to the site of the battle with the Terrorcons, located the remaining shard of Dark Energon, returned to the Nemesis and was ultimately responsible for reanimating Megaton’s frame when he slammed the shard into Megatron’s dwindling spark. When Knock Out’s mind was finally free of Megatron’s influence, the feelings of guilt and shame overwhelmed him. He had made so many mistakes, harmed so many of his friends, and single-handedly brought Megatron back from the brink of death when the war was so close to being over. Now that chance to end it was gone, simply because he did not possess the mental fortitude to stop the Decepticon warlord.

Knock Out had finally broken down completely once he returned to Outpost Omega One. He could not help but sob to Rafael at how sorry he was for shoving the tiny human aside, not once, but multiple times while under Megatron’s control. Rafael had of course forgiven him, he knew Knock Out would never truly harm his friends, though Knock Out saw how the child winced and limped for several days afterward from the minor injuries he had sustained from their interactions. This sent Knock Out into a spell of depression so deep that Ratchet forced him to ingest mood suppressants and share a hab suite with Bulkhead so that someone could keep an eye on him at all times.

It changed him, the whole experience changed Knock Out’s perspective of Megatron forever. Before, he had always been willing to entertain the idea that Optimus Prime so readily and frequently suggested: That all bots were worthy of redemption, that any bot could be saved, even Megatron. Now, Knock Out could not believe that anymore, not after what Megatron had done to him and shown him and forced him to do to others. Some bots simply could not be forgiven for their sins.

 

Bumblebee stood beside a workstation in the medbay of the Nemesis, one optic narrowed as he stared down through the tiny lens of a microscope. He was not sure what he was looking at; some sort of organic matter spliced between the glass slides slowly worked its way across the surface through the fluid that contained it.

“Knock Out,” came a voice from several meters behind him, though he did not respond, his focus was dedicated solely to what he was observing under the microscope.

“Knock Out!” the voice rose in volume, and Bumblebee pulled away from the instrument, annoyance bristling his armor plating as he turned to glare at whoever dared bother him in _his_ medbay.

“ _What_!?” he snapped to Dreadwing, who stood idling on the ramp a few meters away. “What do you _want_ , Dreadwing!?”

“I’m looking for Breakdown. Lord Megatron has asked me to dispatch Airachnid, and he insisted I take backup.” The bulky Seeker stalked down the ramp and further into the medbay, glancing around. “Is he here?”

“No,” Bumblebee lied, eyeing Dreadwing a moment before he quickly turned back to the microscope. “No, I don’t know where he is at the moment. Perhaps you can take someone else.”

As though on cue, Breakdown’s blue frame came walking into the medbay from the back office, his singular optic squinting at a data pad that he was holding too close to his orange faceplates in order to see the words on the screen. “We’re running low on synaptic circuit routers again, Knock Out. Maybe we should – Oh. Hey, Dreadwing, ‘sup?” Breakdown blinked up from the data pad.

“Megatron has ordered me to eliminate Airachnid. He requested I take backup, and I feel you are the best suited for the task,” Dreadwing smirked to the one-eyed mech. Unlike Starscream, Soundwave and, well, pretty much everyone but Knock Out, Dreadwing had always enjoyed Breakdown’s company. The mech could be counted on in a fight, and he possessed a strong anger that had proved invaluable in seeing him through battles time and time again.

“Damn right I am!” Breakdown smiled, tossing the data pad on the counter beside the microscope where Bumblebee stood, causing the sample on the slide to shake with the vibrations. “Let’s go get that glitch.”

Bumblebee again straightened from the work station, sending a glare to the pair as he gestured to the data pad. “Breakdown, _the inventory_?”

“Aw, c’mon, Knocks, it can wait! Like you wouldn’t jump at the chance to throttle her?”

Dreadwing took several steps backward as he looked between the two, his gaze coming to rest on Breakdown. “I’ll meet you on the bridge in five minutes so that Soundwave can send us over.” Then he turned and headed back up the ramp, his frame disappearing as he marched down the hallway.

Bumblebee watched Dreadwing go, making sure the Seeker wasn’t coming back before he stepped closer to Breakdown, looking upwards to his lone yellow optic. “What the hell do you think you’re _doing_!?”

“What?” Breakdown blinked down to him. “Whadda you mean? This is my _chance_! This is my chance to get back into Megatron’s good graces!”

“ _Frag_ his good graces! He doesn’t _care_ about you, Breakdown! You’ve been obsessed with ‘making it up’ to him since Starscream brought you back to the ship!” Bumblebee pointed a clawed finger toward the entrance to the medbay. “Do you really think he’ll _ever_ see you the same way again? You _know_ how he is!”

Breakdown looked genuinely hurt at Bumblebee’s words, and he took a slow step away from him, the light dying from his optic a bit as he stared at the floor for a moment. “You think I’m a pansy-aft just like the rest of them, then,” Breakdown mumbled.

“No! No, I don’t!” Bumblebee grabbed hold of one of Breakdown’s hands with both of his own and tugged the larger bot towards him. “You _know_ I don’t, Breaks! I just…..You need to let this go! I _don’t_ care if it was humans that took you down, and you _don’t_ have to prove anything to me or anyone else because of it!” Bumblebee clutched Breakdown’s larger hand to his chest plates, trying to catch his gaze. “Breakdown, please don’t go. Just…..just stay here and finish the inventory. I’ll tell Dreadwing you were too busy and—”

“But he needs backup,” Breakdown did finally look up to catch Bumblebee’s gaze. “I can’t let him go after Airachnid by himself, you know that.”

Bumblebee sighed, and now it was his turn to glance away as he contemplated the truth to that statement. Airachnid was not a mecha to be trifled with alone, but why did Dreadwing need to take Breakdown? Wasn’t there anyone else who could…No, there really wasn’t. Bumblebee suddenly realized that with Starscream recently gone into hiding, Skyquake dead, Soundwave running the comms and navigation and Megatron at the helm, there was literally no one else available to assist. Primus knows even a hundred Vechicons would prove useless against Airachnid.  Bumblebee could have offered to go instead, or perhaps even accompany them both, but he would be the first to admit that Airachnid could easily best him in a physical fight. Besides, if Breakdown went, that meant Bumblebee would be the only one left on the ship with any type of medical know-how. If Dreadwing or Breakdown were in need of repairs after their task was completed, Bumblebee needed to be ready to assist them.

“Hey,” Breakdown smirked down to Bumblebee, and Bumblebee felt his spark melt at the sight of that smile as Breakdown placed a hand against his faceplates, “it’ll be fine. You _know_ it will. I’ll come back, and to celebrate the glitch’s death, we can open that bottle of high-grade we’ve been hiding from Megs since our last stop on Phobos, okay?”

Bumblebee could only smile and nod to that. Of course it would be okay, he was just being his usual paranoid self, which was saying a lot, as Breakdown was the one who suffered from true, chronic paranoia. Perhaps the affliction had rubbed off on Bumblebee after all these years.

“Okay,” Breakdown answered his own question before he leaned down to place a kiss uncharacteristically delicate of a Decepticon on Bumblebee’s lips. Bumblebee felt his spark flutter at the touch, and he could not help himself but to try and prolong that contact for as long as possible before Breakdown pulled away.

“You’re my everything, Knocks,” Breakdown said, still smiling as he backed away from Bumblebee before he turned and headed for the ramp and the exit of the medbay.

Bumblebee smirked, eyeing the floor for a moment before he looked up to watch Breakdown go. “Try to come back in one piece, alright?”

“Of course!” Breakdown chimed, raising a hand with a departing wave as he cleared the ramp and disappeared down the hallway.

Bumblebee sighed, staring at the vacant ramp for a moment before he turned back to the microscope and cursed when he remembered that his specimen had been ruined by the vibrations of the data pad being tossed on the countertop.

Bumblebee had been staring at the new slide under the microscope and entering notes on his data pad for at least an hour before he felt the first hint of a spark tremor within his frame. The foreign feeling was enough to make him sit upright in his seat, and he sat motionless for several seconds, letting the tremors flicker through his system as he waited for his internal diagnostics to kick in and give him a readout of exactly what was occurring inside him. The word “INCONCLUSIVE” flashed back at him on his HUD.

He pushed away from the work station and moved to one of the medslabs, plugging one of the vitals jacks into his right arm and watching the monitor display for whatever diagnosis it would provide, but again, the readouts were useless: “UNKNOWN ERROR”.

Bumblebee stared down at the line plugged into his servo for a moment, wondering if he had somehow not set the connection correctly before the tremble in his spark suddenly turned into a sharp, stabbing pain that had him instantaneously sinking to his knees. Bumblebee clutched a hand over his chest plates as the pain grew and grew under his chassis, as though he were having a sparkattack. All of his medical training and education was telling him that that’s what this feeling was, and he almost laughed at the fact that he was having one at all; sparkattacks were for ancients and highly-stressed individuals, not _him_.  If Breakdown ever found out about this, surely he would—.

_Breakdown._

It was _him_. Suddenly the realization of it all came crashing down on Bumblebee like a tidal wave. Breakdown was in pain. _No_. Breakdown was _dying_. The comprehension of what was happening coupled with the increasing burning sensation that was growing inside Bumblebee’s chest made him lurch forward, his faceplates inches from the floor as he cried out against the pain. This couldn’t possibly be happening. No, this _wasn’t happening_!

The sudden shock of it all made it feel like his spark was going to burst from his chest. Bumblebee quickly unlocked his chest plates and the hardened doors of his protoform to reveal his spark chamber, which felt like it was about fall out of his frame and onto the floor. Everything around him ceased to exist as he reached inside his open chest and gripped his spark casing with a hand, venting heavily as he struggled against the pain and sudden sadness that crept up out of nowhere.

Slag, _this was really happening_.

Bumblebee could not help the ragged cries that emanated from his vocalizer as the pain of his spark only increased, forcing him to rest his forehead on the floor, submitting himself completely to the grief that was washing over him. He swallowed hard, trying to throttle the screams that again threatened to escape his voice box as the burning sensation of his spark continued to amplify. He was still expecting that his spark would simply drop from his frame and that would be it, that he too would offline at the apparent death of his partner, but it did not happen.

The brilliant light of his red spark was shining so brightly from his open chamber than he did not initially see the sliver, cloven peds that were suddenly standing before him, nor was he aware of the imposing shadow that crossed his frame as it shuddered against the pain.

“Knock Out!” the voice startled Bumblebee back into reality. He knew he ought to be afraid of it, something inside him was saying that he should be terrified of that voice, but another, more vocal part of him simply didn’t care what the voice implied. “What is this _pathetic_ display!?”

Bumblebee slowly looked up from the floor to the gigantic peds standing right in front of him, and he instantly resigned himself to the fact that he would die right then and there. He was going to be killed, and he did not care, in fact, he was welcoming it. Despite his acceptance of this, tears sprung from his optics as he shook his head, another sob wracking his frame as he struggled to speak his partner’s name. “… _Breakdown_!”

The massive figure moved to crouch down before him. He looked up through his tearful gaze only to lock red optics with Megatron himself. He watched the Decepticon warlord’s gaze travel over his shivering frame, from his tear-streaked faceplates to his open spark chamber and back again.

“Just kill me,” Bumblebee heard himself say with a quivering voice as he pulled his gaze from Megatron’s optics. “Just _kill_ me and get it over with…”

Pointed silver digits much larger than his own suddenly gripped Bumblebee under the arms and he felt himself being lifted clear off his peds and shoved into a forced seat atop the counter space that lined the medbay. Bumblebee shivered with fear under the firm grip of Megatron’s hands, tears continuing to leak from his optics as he was forced to stare deep into Megatron’s penetrating gaze. What was even more terrifying was that the leader of the Deceptions unexpectedly pressed his forehead up against Bumblebee’s own, so that their optics were dialed in on one another, with nowhere else to look.

“Knock Out,” Megatron spoke in a voice Bumblebee had never heard before. It was softer, quieter, and dare he imagine it to be true: _Concerned_.  “Pull yourself together and listen to me. You will have your revenge. I will go after Airachnid _myself,_ and once I am through with her, I will relinquish whatever is left of her dying spark to _you_ to do with as you see fit.”

Bumblebee couldn’t believe it. His frame still wracked with the sobs he was trying and failing to suppress, all he could do was nod against Megatron’s frame, the legendary “Buckethead” pressed right up against his own helm, making promises to him that for whatever reason he happily believed. Yes, he wanted revenge. Yes, he wanted Airachnid to _suffer_ for what she had done to Breakdown.

Poor Breakdown. Primus, _Breakdown_. His Conjux Endura. His literal only reason for being, seemingly wiped out in a matter of seconds. Bumblebee burst into another fit of tears, shrinking away from Megatron’s gaze as he quickly slapped a hand over his leaking optics. This was it. His Master would see this weakness within him and end his life, he was certain of it, and yet he did not care. The pain was so unbearable that death at this point seemed like a welcome respite from his present agony.

“I will return Breakdown’s frame to you for proper entombment, you have my word,” Megatron pulled his head back, but his hands continued to grip Bumblebee’s arms to keep his frame within close proximity as he spoke. When he saw Bumblebee attempting to pull away, he only gripped harder. “ _Listen_ to me!” Megatron growled through grit denta plates as he shook Bumblebee’s frame in his hands, “You have _my word_. Do you understand!?”

Bumblebee was so startled by what he felt next that his spark nearly flipped in his chassis: It was Megatron’s EM field. For one brief second, he felt it press up against him, and it was filled with concern and sympathy and _compassion_. Coming from Megatron, it was wholly unbelievable, and only served to make Bumblebee cry even more that he had been deemed worthy of such a gift from his Master. “Yes, yes I understand, my Liege,” Bumblebee could barely find the words as he now clung to Megatron as though his very life depended on it. “…. _Thank you_.”

The EM field was swept away as quickly as it had been offered, and a low growl issued from deep within Megatron’s chest as he released Bumblebee from his grasp. With a touch Bumblebee could only describe as gentle, Megatron reached out and closed the doors and armor plating of Bumblebee’s chest, sealing the red glow of Bumblebee’s spark away behind those protective layers.

Megatron finally pulled away completely and turned to stalk back towards the exit ramp of the medbay. “I will allow you to mourn today, but I expect you to be fully prepared to accept Airachnid when I deliver her to you. I trust you will not disappoint me.”

“No, my Lord,” Bumblebee was quick to wipe his tears away with the back of his arm as he watched Megatron depart, “I won’t.”

It changed him, the whole experience changed Bumblebee’s perspective of Megatron forever. Before, he had always assumed that the leader of the Decepticons cared nothing for his subordinates, that they were all merely cogs in his war machine, all working tirelessly towards his goal of ultimate control and dominance over Cybertron. Bumblebee had thought Megatron cold, ruthless, terrifying and incapable of expressing any emotions other than anger and smug satisfaction whenever he got what he wanted. Now, Bumblebee could not believe that anymore, not after Megatron had shown him concern and sympathy, however fleeting, when Bumblebee was at the weakest emotional moment of his life. Perhaps Megatron could be kind and compassionate after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Units of time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	12. A Realization

“Stand by,” Ratchet eyed First Aid, his hands poised over Bumblebee’s frame as they clutched the two clamps that connected directly to the mobile reboot coil station he had dragged over to the medslab. First Aid quickly backed away, giving Ratchet a nod once he was clear, which was Ratchet’s cue to place the clamps directly onto Bumblebee’s power cells. An arc of electricity crackled from one clamp to the other as Ratchet connected them to the two anodes on either side of the organ that controlled Bumblebee’s power supply. Once they were securely in place, Ratchet leaned back to the reboot coil station and slammed a fist against the large red button on its control panel, the action releasing a high voltage shot of electricity directly into Bumblebee’s frame. 

First Aid remained where he was, several feet away from the medslab as he monitored Bumblebee’s vitals on the screen that hung alongside the berth. He felt himself holding an inhalation of air as he watched the multiple lines of Bumblebee’s vitals ticking across the monitor, and he vented in frustration as Bumblebee’s power cells remained offline. He shook his head and quickly looked back to Ratchet. “Try it again! Crank it up to four-forty!”

Ratchet nodded again, twisting the dial on the reboot coil station to the right before he turned back to the medslab. “Stand by,” Ratchet slammed the button again. Attempting to shock a bot’s power cells back online was always a gamble. The balance between finding the right current to match a bot’s normal running voltage was almost always trial and error. A low pulse was useless, but a jolt of electricity that was too high would sooner kill a bot than save them, not to mention the damage to the lithium lining of the power cells themselves that was guaranteed whether the ailing bot survived or not. There was a reason reboot coils were a last resort.

“There!” First Aid pointed to the vials monitor as the third line on the screen suddenly fluctuated with a bounce. “You _did_ it! It worked!”

“Let’s not celebrate just yet,” Ratchet quickly shut off the reboot coil station and set the clamps atop it before grabbing his surgical tools once more. “We still have to seal off his—” the Medic cut his words short as the dimming glow of Bumblebee’s spark, bare and visible to both Ratchet and First Aid as they had needed to open Bumblebee’s spark chamber for easy access, suddenly swelled outwards.

First Aid winced at the sudden brightness, quickly throwing an arm over his faceplates and internally darkening the tint of his visor as he shuttered his optics despite all the other precautionary measures he took.

Ratchet bore the brunt of the sudden illumination, his face and hands already lowered to resume his work on repairing Bumblebee’s severed internal Energon lines. He actually cried out as the brilliance of the light practically burned through his optic lenses. For a moment, the entire medbay was flooded with the radiant glow so that barely a single shadow existed within the room before the light faded again.

“Primus, _dammit_! What the _hell_ was that!?” Ratchet cursed, his optics shuttered tight as he tried to phase out the spots dancing before his vision.

 “I don’t know!” First Aid dared to open his own eyes and peek through his darkened visor, thankful that he was able to see anything at all as he lowered his arm and looked to the monitor once more. Though some of Bumblebee’s vitals still struggled, his spark now burned powerfully, the readout on the monitor that represented its signature a strong, solid wavelength of data. “His spark,” First Aid stared at the screen, “It was something with his spark...”

“Yes! Yes, I realize that! Is it good or bad? My fragging optics!” Ratchet growled, pressing the back of one hand over his optics while their receptors continued to calibrate.

“It’s good! I think it’s good!”

 

Knock Out’s consciousness resurfaced in a familiar place: His own medbay. He knew this to be true because he recognized the sounds and smells and even the feel of the surface he was laying on. Some bot’s voice, no, it was two bots, they were shouting back and forth, and the sounds of various machines and medical equipment beeped and toned somewhere in the distance.  

What the hell was he even doing here? Knock Out tried to bring up the last recorded memory from his databanks, but for some reason they were “currently unavailable”. What did that even _mean!_? _Stupid_ recall processor. While Knock Out was busy berating his own operating systems, a warning suddenly flashed across his HUD, indicating that the temperature of his protoform was way too hot. _That_ was never a good sign.

With a conscious effort, Knock Out released the internal locks on his chest plates to allow the heated air to escape his systems. The right chest plate swung freely at its hinge, and he was vaguely aware that he raised his right hand to push the plate open as wide as the hinges would allow. The left plate appeared to be stuck. He pressed at it with his arm, but it refused to move, as though it was stuck on something.

He started to run an initial diagnostic of his frame, and in his mind, he cringed as line after line of damages filed down the left side of his internal feed, sorted by worst to least consequential. Knock Out selected the topmost entry, an alert that his fans were working overtime within his chassis to cool it down. Apparently, his internal temperature was a real problem. That was fine, he could fix that. Letting his interior readouts guide him, he noted that a hinge at his upper left collar plate seemed to be inoperable. That must have been what was causing the hitch when he tried to open it only moment ago. Further attempts to press it open with his right arm proved useless, as though it was welded shut. Well, there was only one way to fix that.

Still in a daze, he transformed his right hand into the now mostly-dull circular saw blade and kicked the motor on high as he attempted to angle the saw’s spinning teeth down between his neck and the welded hinge of his chest plates. In his delusional mind, he was certain that this was all that needed to be done to remedy his overheating. Simply unlock the plate to open it, and everything would be fine.

In reality, while Knock Out did manage to sever the welded section of his chest plates, the metal having been melted by the explosion of the rocket, he was completely unaware that the blunt teeth of his saw blade were simultaneously slicing into the left side of his faceplates as his head lolled from one side to the other while he struggled to keep himself online. Somewhere in his internal haze, he thought someone might be punching him in the face. Why would anyone _do_ that right now? Couldn’t they see he was _busy_!?

Ratchet, who had finally recalibrated his optics and was once again hovering over the frame of Bumblebee as he worked desperately to stem the flow of Energon from the mech’s lower tract, was startled by the sound of the buzzing saw blade across the medbay. He paused in his work, blinking up and across the room to other medslab just in time to see Knock Out attempting to cut himself open. “What the frag?”

First Aid had looked up and over as well, following Ratchet’s gaze and cringing as he watched Knock Out slice into himself. “He’s _alive_!?”

“Stop him before he kills himself, the idiot!” Ratchet shook his head and quickly looked back to the surgery he was trying to get through and had now been interrupted in completing _twice_.

Neither Autobot Medic had noticed the red glow of Knock Out’s spark shimmering with brilliance at the same instant that Bumblebee’s had dominated the room; they were too close and too blinded by the glow that had emanated from Bumblebee’s spark to have realized that the same bizarre phenomena had occurred within the former ‘Con.

First Aid rushed over to the other slab, grabbed Knock Out’s arm and yanked it back as hard as he could. “Knock Out, STOP!” He slammed Knock Out’s arm and saw blade down against the slab and simultaneously tapped one of pedals under the berth, causing one of the restraint cuffs to slide up and out of the slab and effectively pin Knock Out’s wrist beside his shoulder. First Aid quickly grabbed the vitals jack from the station beside the medslab and plugged it into Knock Out’s bound arm, watching as the monitor filled with diagnostic information from Knock Out’s frame.

“Son of a….,” First Aid sent a glare across the medbay to Ratchet, who was still working diligently to seal and reconnect Bumblebee’s inner-tubing. “I _told_ you to let me check on him when Bulkhead brought him in! I fragging _told_ you, Ratchet!”

“Well, some day when _you’re_ CMO, you can make all the hard decisions, then!” Ratchet sent an equally offensive glare back to First Aid as he momentarily looked up from Bumblebee’s chassis. “Do what you need to do to get him stabilized and then get back over here to assist me. We can’t split our skills between them right now, First Aid, that’s just not an option. I _need_ you over here to help me finish this.”

First Aid narrowed his gaze on Ratchet for a moment as he contemplated the older Medic’s words. First Aid had a hard time believing that Ratchet _really_ needed his help, that this was all some ruse to let Knock Out die from his injuries because Ratchet simply didn’t want the ex ‘Con around. It sickened him, really. It sickened First Aid that any Medic would so willingly place one bot’s life over another based on affiliation, former or otherwise. That was not something First Aid would have expected of Ratchet, but he could sense the annoyance and reservations drifting off of his EM field, whether Ratchet himself was aware of it or not.

Shaking his head, First Aid quickly set about administering to Knock Out what aid he could. He stemmed the flows of Energon from the gaping hole that had been Knock Out’s left shoulder and chest plates, and completed a very hasty and sloppy surface weld along the protoform skin of Knock Out’s jawline that had been chewed up by the saw blade. He set up an Energon line through the ex-Con’s fuel ports along his remaining arm and pushed several sedatives and pain dampening drugs through that line, though none of them seemed to take hold. This was evidenced by Knock Out, still in a disoriented state, mumbling a continuous stream of readouts from his own internal diagnostic reports, all of which were already visible on the monitor above his slab.

“Yes, I can _read_ , Knock Out. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong,” First Aid rolled his optics as he quickly shifted to the closest counter and unlocked one of the drawers, scouring the selection of sedatives there.

“You should have him _under_ by now,” Ratchet called from across the medbay, the irritation clear in his voice.

“I’m _trying_ , but he’s not responding to anything!”

“Give him some Lytholine, that’ll shut him up.”

“That’ll _kill_ him! That stuff is for bots the size of Ultra Magnus!”

“Psh, no it won’t,” Ratchet called back before he paused in his work to set his tools aside so that he could use both hands to lift a heavily-damaged piece of hardware from Bumblebee’s frame. His sigh as he stared at the torn and warped piece of metal was so indicative of defeat that it caused First Aid to glance up from Knock Out’s frame and look over to Ratchet.

First Aid knew exactly what that organ was in Ratchet’s hands, he could tell even from his current distance. Ratchet caught his gaze and the two Medics stared at one another for several seconds over the broken hunk of metal coated in Energon before Ratchet finally shook his head and set it aside on a tray.

“I can’t fix it,” Ratchet muttered, grabbing his tools once more. “It’s gone.”

“We can both try later, when we have more time to look at it,” First Aid tried to remain hopeful, as always, while he watched the fuel line running into Knock Out’s arm port turn pink with Lytholine as he administered the drug. It only took five seconds before Knock Out ceased muttering and went completely still.

Ratchet gave no response to First Aid’s suggestion, though his glare was prominent as First Aid quickly moved back to Bumblebee’s medslab. “Get me the impact wrench,” Ratchet barked out the order.

First Aid did not verbally respond, instead choosing to send Ratchet an acknowledgement ping, the equivalent of saying “Understood.” Ping responses were generally reserved for when the medbay was overly busy, loud, or too chaotic and a simple electrical tone was a quicker response than forming words through one’s vocalizer. Outside of those particular settings, it was the nice way of saying “I’m not going to dignify your request with a verbal response, but I’ll still do as you ask.”

Ratchet eyed the impact wrench as it was offered to him, and he muttered a quick “Thank you” before taking it. He knew he was being “an asshole”, as the humans would put it, but this day, Primus, this day was just about putting him over the edge.  “Winning” the war suddenly seemed like a cruel joke. He was starting to resent Optimus Prime for leaving them all to weather this storm by themselves. He knew that was the wrong way to think, the wrong outlook to have, but at this point, he could barely help it.

Ratchet released another sigh as he attempted to pull himself together, unconsciously sending a wave of apology across his EM field toward his coworker. That was the thing about First Aid: He had some sort of presence about him that could make a bot realize how ridiculous or unreasonable they were being, get them to apologize seemingly of their own accord, and then instantaneously forgive them for it.

Ratchet flicked his gaze to Knock Out’s still form across the way, briefly, before turning back to Bumblebee. “What’s your prognosis, Doctor? Will he make it?”

“Yes. With proper repairs, yes,” First Aid finally spoke up as he followed Ratchet’s gaze, then looked between the two screens monitoring each bot’s vitals. “I think they both will. Their sparks look strong.”

 

It took the two Autobot Medics nearly six hours to fix Bumblebee’s frame until they were able to downgrade his status from emergency to critical. They tied up all the loose ends, removed what could not be salvaged, sealed all the lines, welded the necessary frame fractures, applied the fast patches, and resigned themselves to the waiting game.  They had done all they could; it was up to Bumblebee and Primus now. Ratchet would never admit it, to anyone, but when that day finally ended, he dragged his aft back to his quarters once First Aid said he would take first watch, and he prayed. He prayed to Primus, and to Optimus, that Bumblebee would at least survive through the night. Just let him live one more night, and if he did, then Ratchet might dare to ask that he survive another.

Knock Out’s injuries were by far less life-threatening but proved no less challenging to fix. The explosion from the rocket blast has deprived him of his left servo and every piece of armor plating from the left side of his upper chassis. The heat had melted away the thin protoform flesh from everything in the surrounding area, and they’d been forced to bolt the fast patches to his bare frame, where the protoskin would grow back underneath.

Delivering the news to the rest of the Autobots that their newly-appointed Commander’s life was hanging in the balance was something that Ratchet knew would not go over well. They had all been gathered in the hallway outside of the medbay for hours, and when the news was not hopeful, each had crept off to process the information in their own way. Bulkhead looked depressed, Smokescreen shocked, Arcee as stoic as she could manage, and Ultra Magnus merely nodded, the only one to provide a verbal response:

“We’ll keep trying to get the comms activated. It’s what Bumblebee would want. We have to reach the others.”

Wheeljack was nowhere to be found.

The two Medics kept their two patients heavily sedated, or so they thought. Bumblebee had not so much as twitched, so it had genuinely startled First Aid when he noticed a window pop up on the monitor of Knock Out’s medslab some ten hours later. He walked over to the slab, eyeing the screen for a moment as it filled with data before he cast a doubtful glance down to Knock Out’s frame, now noticing the dull glow from the ex-‘Con’s half-shuttered optics. How the frag he was back online, First Aid did not know.

“You really shouldn’t be wasting your power cells to running diagnostics,” First Aid said, shaking his head as he pulled the data pad from the end of Knock Out’s slab and tapped the screen with his fingers.

“I wanna help,” Knock Out’s vocalizer slurred the words it was emitting, and First Aid noted how the bot’s red optics tried to focus on the monitor above the slab. “Why d’you fraggers never let me help?”

First Aid entered a few words onto the data pad, then glanced down to Knock Out as he stepped closer to the medslab, tilting the data pad at the prone bot to allow a beam of blue light to carry over his frame to get a new reading. “I get that you’re used to going it alone, but seriously, you don’t have to do that anymore. We can take care of you.”

Knock Out scoffed, narrowing his gaze on the monitor for a moment. “Psh, nobody takes care of me,” he was forced to pause as his head rocked backwards as consciousness threatened to evade him, but he found it again, “….but _me_.”

“Ugh, Medics make the worst patients,” First Aid glared to him before he looked back to his data pad, tapping at it a few more times, sending a new stream of information to the CMRD. “Not that you _are_ one,” that was said with another scowl to Knock Out.

Hours ago, well, as soon as Ratchet had left the medbay, First Aid had manually transformed the circular saw on Knock Out’s remaining servo back into his hand and released it from the cuff restraint, which was how Knock Out was now able to bring his hand upward and grip his fingers over his optics.

“What the _hell_ do you have me on?”

“Lytholine,” First Aid replied, eyeing the monitor that hung above Knock Out’s slab, “you’re probably feeling pretty good right about now.”

“Oh…I’ve never had _that_ before,” Knock Out pulled his hand away from his optics, suddenly enamored with it. “Holy slag, lookit my fingers,” he waggled them for a moment in front of his now-wide optics, “they’re so _pointy_ ….I could _totally_ pluck someone’s optics out with these things.”

“I’m sure you have before,” First Aid said as he cast a quick glance down to Knock Out.

Knock Out chuckled, staring at his fingers as though recalling a funny memory, “Hehe, yeaaaah, I have,” he suddenly let his hand drop onto his chest, shuttering his optics for a moment before they sprung open again and stared at the Autobot Medic through the drug-induced haze. “First Aid, hey, mech…I don’t even _care_ you’re a virgin,” he pointed to the other bot with a finger. “You’re like…. the coolest Medic _ever_. Okay? Don’t let any bot tell you otherwise.”

“Oookaaaay,” First Aid slapped his own hand over his optics, trying to contain the levels of embarrassment creeping up from his processor. “Yes, Knock Out. Thank you. _Thanks_ for that. You know how _worried_ I always am about not seeming cool enough.”

“It’s okay,” Knock Out reached out and gave First Aid’s arm a gentle pat of reassurance.

First Aid rolled his optics before venting a sigh he now realized he’d been holding for way too long. He was thankful to be nearing the end of his shift and looking forward to dropping onto his recharge slab so that he could try to forget this day had ever happened, at least for a few hours.

“Oh,” Knock Out said as he stopped patting First Aid’s servo with his hand to now lightly hold it instead, a look of genuine concern spreading across his faceplates, which startled First Aid, only because he did not think Knock Out was capable of such an expression, “you look tired,” Knock Out continued, “I’ve stayed too long, I should go. You’ll feel better after you get some rest.” Of course, First Aid was quickly reminded that that expression was being fueled by a cocktail of drugs that were apparently so strong, Knock Out believed their roles were reversed. Well, it was nice to see that despite the drugs and the past failure of “Berthside Manner 101”, Knock Out was in fact capable of showing a little care and compassion, however minimal.

_“You’re_ gonna go, huh?” First Aid couldn’t help but smirk behind his mask.

“Yup. Don’t worry,” Knock Out gave a pat to First Aid’s arm once more before his own servo dropped back down to the slab, the glow quickly dimming from his optics as they began to shutter once more, “I’ll….come back to check on you….in a few…”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

 

When Ratchet returned to the medbay for his shift a few hours later, First Aid quickly noted that the older bot in no way appeared to have powered down, but he said nothing. There were some battles that just weren’t worth fighting, and trying to convince Ratchet to return to his quarters for actual rest was one of them.

Ratchet wordlessly nodded along to the status updates First Aid gave, forcing his circuits to focus his optics intently on the screens of the data pads for each patient. He was used to functioning on little to no recharge, it just took a bit more effort on his part to maintain concentration.

Once First Aid left the medbay, Ratchet immediately rechecked all the lines that connected Bumblebee to the support stations, even though he knew First Aid had just performed the same task an hour ago, and that the other Medic was perfectly capable and competent in doing so, but Ratchet couldn’t help it. He was more than thrilled to see that Bumblebee had made it through the first critical cycle (apparently praying to questionable deities and dead friends _did_ help).

Satisfied that things had been done the right way the first time, Ratchet stepped across the bay to Knock Out’s slab and performed the same task, though he did pause upon his completion to stare at the armless mech and shake his head. He knew that Knock Out had indeed been trying to save Bumblebee when Wheeljack came across them, the proof was in the field repairs to Bumblebee’s inner tubing and hardware components. But what the slag had happened out there, and how, would remain a mystery until one of the bots woke up.

Ratchet had already sent several possible scenarios through his processor. Bulkhead had stated that they found Bumblebee impaled below the Skyway, so clearly he had fallen from that height….Or was it possible that he had been pushed? But if Knock Out had pushed him, why go through the efforts to attempt to save him? Or was it all part of a larger plan to gain the Autobots’ trust? Ratchet could hear Knock Out now, and his optics narrowed just thinking about it: “ _I_ saved your Commander’s life! Now you _have_ to accept me as one of your own!”

Muttering to himself at these thoughts, Ratchet pulled the data pad from its holding tray at the end of Knock Out’s slab and moved back across the bay to where Bumblebee lay. Taking a seat nearby, Ratchet brought up the CMRD on the small screen and typed Knock Out’s name into the search bar. He realized that aside from Knock Out being a Deception, a Medic (sort of), and Breakdown’s former partner before the other mech’s demise, Ratchet knew next to nothing about him, which did not help garner any further trust for the ex-‘Con. Setting the data pad down on the counter before him, Ratchet began to read the entries of Knock Out’s file in the CMRD; now that Ratchet had forced him to upload his full record, the entries were plentiful.

The most recent logs revealed what Ratchet already knew: Megatron beat the slag out of his subordinates. Ratchet was able to deduce this based on the significant lack of battlefield injuries in Knock Out’s file and the plethora of non-combat-related injuries. Medics generally stayed “inside the wire”, though Ratchet was fully aware that Knock Out had joined in on physical altercations between Megatron’s forces and the Autobots plenty of times. In fact, Ratchet could recall several instances where Optimus Prime himself had come back to base with injuries he had sustained from Knock Out’s staff, drill, saw blades, or fists.

Ratchet glanced up from the data pad and over to Knock Out, suddenly realizing how dangerous the mech might actually be. Anyone willing to take on Optimus themselves, to even be willing to get within servo’s range of the Prime, was either stupid, crazy, or a highly-skilled and deadly adversary. Ratchet had always assumed the first two of Knock Out, but he had never really stopped to consider the third option until now.

Looking back to the pad, Ratchet spotted but a handful of repairs due to injuries sustained from firearms and the occasional shrapnel wound. No, the more consistent and repeated aliments in Knock Out’s file were a whole lot of broken servos, cracked optic lenses, or joints and axels cracked and separated not from laser-powered firearms or explosions, but from twisting motions with an apparently heavy amount of torque behind them. And fractured or broken jaw frames, lots and lots of fractured or broken jaw frames.

Ratchet was finding nothing useful here. He made large swipes with his finger across the screen of the data pad, scrolling back thousands of years with each motion. Despite Knock Out having uploaded his remaining data to the CMRD weeks ago, there were still significant gaps in his file, but Ratchet attributed these gaps to his knowledge that Knock Out and Breakdown had gone “off the grid” for nearly two million years during the war. Ratchet recollected that the two would occasionally pop up on the Autobots’ radar on Earth every so often during that time, and there was always the discussion of whether or not something should be done about that. But Optimus had forever maintained that as long as they did not appear to be harming the planet or whatever local human population they had integrated themselves into, they should be left alone, and in truth, to the best of Team Prime’s knowledge, the pair never had. It was not until the last years of the war that the Earthbound Autobots had started coming into regular contact with the two acting with violence on Megatron’s behalf, once they had been summoned back to the Nemesis permanently.

Still, these were all things that Ratchet was already aware of. Perhaps he should start at the beginning?

Ratchet reconfigured the data’s filters, so that the entries read in chronological order, and began to flip through the screens. The initial entries of Knock Out’s file were the standard basic bot information. He had been forged during the pre-war era, yet had no CNA donors added to his genetic coding sequences. _Interesting._ Then there were the generic entries of any Sparkling as it developed into a fully-fledged bot, from his basic programming up to the final installation, although after those, the entries became oddly mundane and repetitive. A series of vaccinations, three to be exact, were administered, all on the same day, every year, for nearly a million years in a row: Plasmitis, Nanofluenza, and MMR (Magnonsles, Mendelvia, Rotonorrhea). It was an odd grouping of vaccinations, and Ratchet felt like he had seen the pattern somewhere else before, in some other bot’s CMRD log, though his recharge-deprived mind could not immediately place it.

All bots required vaccinations to maintain optimal levels of functionality and perform at their best, yet not all bots needed the same sets of inoculations. What was deemed necessary for one could just as easily harm another. These medical differences were, unfortunately, often used in the pre-war era by the Functionist platform touted by Nominus Prime as proof that certain groups of bots were born to perform certain tasks, and nothing more. Yet any Medic worth their hands knew that the vaccinations required for each bot held no such meaning, it was simply differences in CNA and genetic code sequencing. Every bot was different, yet some had similarities that required certain vaccinations. That’s all it ever meant. It was the Functionists who first came up with the inane idea to record the CNA of Hatchlings and announce that their genetic coding sequences _must_ automatically mean that they fell into a specific caste.

Ratchet shook his head, trying to free himself of the politics that were so often intermingled with his line of work in the past, before the war had started. _Well,_ _let’s be real_ , he told himself, _it was this sort of slag that started the war to begin with._

So, there it was on the data pad before him, the vaccinations that dictated Knock Out’s caste, and yet Ratchet could not recall the sequence of inoculations, or what bot might receive them. He flicked through the screens again, watching the same lines of code reappear over and over, until suddenly, thousands of years later in the file, there was a significant event: A lengthy stay in a medical facility for, of all things, treatments due to exposure to sodium silicate.

Ratchet racked his brain module for information on sodium silicate and quickly recalled the substance. It was, essentially, a poison. Highly toxic to bots when ingested, the heat from a bot’s engines dehydrated the consumed solution into a powder-like substance that then coated the inside of all the internal gears and tanks and was inhaled into the vents and air filters. The powder would then scratch at the surface of all those parts and cause a bot’s engines to seize, all in a matter of minutes.

Who would poison Knock Out, especially pre-war Knock Out, and why?

Knock Out’s stay in the medical facility had lasted for stellar-cycles; for certain, based on the surgeries and treatments listed in the log, he had almost deactivated several times. And then there was nothing. The entries stopped for years, even the vaccination regime. In fact, nothing picked up again until two million years later, when Ratchet knew Knock Out had at that point in time allied himself with the Decepticons.

Ratchet skimmed backwards through the log, his optics flicking over the entries made by the Medics at the medical facility in Iacon. Ratchet swore he had seen this information before, somewhere, but where? He stared at the lines of text, trying to recall the instance as his gaze drifted over to the date Knock Out was admitted to the facility, and then it all clicked. The date triggered a stream of recalls that Ratchet had not run through his processor in slightly more than four million years, and suddenly all the pieces fell into place all at once.

Ratchet looked up from the data pad again, over Bumblebee’s medslab and across to Knock Out’s, like he was seeing the bot for the first time. A series of emotions flicked through Ratchet’s processor before he finally rolled his optics and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his olfactories and mutter under his breath to reiterate the deal he had made with himself deca-cycles ago.

“I’m gonna retire after this. I _swear_ to Primus, I’m gonna retire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: Remember the U.S. "cash for clunkers" program back in 2009? People were encouraged to trade in their old "clunker" vehicles for cash to purchase newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles that were safer on the roads and better for the environment. Sodium silicate was used to disable the engines in the old vehicles once they were turned in so that no one would try to sell them for parts.
> 
> Notes on Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	13. A Confession

Ratchet would never admit to anyone that he had accidentally let himself power down in his seat during his shift, but luckily he would never have to, as when he suddenly jolted back online, there was no one else in the medbay except him and his two patients.

Rubbing his fingers into his shuttered optics, Ratchet did a quick check of his chronometer, cursing when he realized he had been offline for many hours. First Aid would be along shortly so that they could once again rotate out, although Ratchet told himself he would remain in the medbay to make up for lost time.

He quickly moved from his seat and over to Bumblebee and set about swapping out empty Energon bags for full ones, making note of any changes on the vitals readouts, and ensuring that the repairs he had made the day before were still holding firm and free of any rust growth. What gave him pause was when his optics caught sight of the mangled hunk of metal he had pulled from Bumblebee’s frame that was now soaking in a mixture of cleaners, lubricants, and preservatives. Primus, what were they going to do about _that_? Bumblebee would be devastated. _Again_.

Ratchet shook his head, leaning heavily on the counter with both hands. First Aid had hope, as usual, that everything was going to turn out alright, but Ratchet had always seen the Energon cube as half-empty in life, and these past few deca-cycles had been no exception.

_*Clack………clack clack….clack*_

Ratchet quickly raised his head and turned towards the scraping sound coming from Knock Out’s medslab. From where he stood, Ratchet could see the dark, pointy fingers reaching out to take a swipe at the vitals monitor in an attempt to turn it to face the berth, but with no success. Narrowing his gaze, Ratchet moved from the counter and across the bay to stand at Knock Out’s side. He watched the bot struggle a few more times before he finally cleared his vocalizer to announce his presence, as Knock Out was clearly unaware of him. “* _Ahem_ *”

Knock Out’s dim optics slowly drifted over and upwards to Ratchet before he pointed a finger to the monitor. “Let me see.”

Ratchet stepped forward and turned the screen so that it faced Knock Out’s medslab, though he made sure to push it back just out of Knock Out’s reach as well. “Would you like to offer up a diagnosis, while you’re at it?” he crossed his arms, glaring back to the other mech.

“ _Yes,_ I would,” Knock Out’s head slumped back down onto his shoulder as he tried to focus his gaze on the screen, his servo still hanging off the edge of the berth as he pointed.

“Go right ahead.”

“ _First_ of all,” Knock Out said after a long pause of him staring dazedly, “you’ve got me on _way_ too many drugs. I mean, I can barely see straight.”

“Actually, I’m not even sure how you’re awake right now, I gave you enough pain dampeners and sedatives to put down an equinoid,” speaking of which, Ratchet stepped around and behind the monitor to check the levels in the Energon bags that hung there.

“Hah! It’s ‘cause I’ve built up a _ridiculous_ tolerance to like, _aaaalll_ the pain dampeners and sedatives,” Knock Out moved his hand through the air to indicate how vast “aaaalll” really was.

“Mmm, I’m not going to ask why or how. _Yet_.”

“Thirdly….”

“You missed ‘second’.”

“ _Secondly,”_ Knock Out squinted at the screen, “it looks like one of my servos is gone.”

“How astute of you,” Ratchet moved to stand beside the slab again.

“Well, _that_ can’t be right. I mean, it’s _right here_ ,” Knock Out lifted his remaining arm up slightly before letting it dangle off the edge once more.

“Tsk, the other servo, Knock Out,” Ratchet rolled his optics.

Knock Out rolled his head from his right shoulder to his left, or rather, where his left shoulder should have been. He was so used to having the massive red and black pauldrons and the wide curve of his chest plate block his view that it took him a few minutes to process that he was even looking at his own protoform. Or whatever was left of it. “Aww,” he lamented before looking back up to the other mech. “Ratchet, I _needed_ that! Hahaha!” He slapped his hand over his optics and laughed and laughed while Ratchet silently fumed beside him.

“He’s pretty funny when he’s doped up,” said First Aid as he came walking across the medbay towards Ratchet to stand on the opposite of Knock Out’s slab and eye him. “Can we keep him like this forever?” And when Ratchet appeared to be seriously contemplating that idea, First Aid glared back to him. “I’m _kidding_ , Ratchet! We _can’t_ do that!”

“I _know_ , I know,” Ratchet sighed. _If only._

“First Aid!” Knock Out suddenly pointed to the other Medic.  “I don’t care what Ratchet says about you, you’re still….you’re still good in _my_ data pad,” he struggled to complete the sentence as whatever energy reserves he had been using to keep himself online were already beginning to deplete.

“You said stuff about me?” First Aid frowned to Ratchet as he watched him turn the monitor back off to the side and study it for a moment.

“What?” Ratchet blinked from the screen. “No! Don’t _listen_ to him, First Aid!”

First Aid grumbled to himself as he shifted his optics back across the bay towards Bumblebee, indicating him with a slight nod of his head. “How is he?”

Ratchet crossed his servos as he glanced over to Bumblebee as well, venting a sigh. “It’s slow going. I think we should keep him under for a few more cycles, maybe increase the drip on the boredium line until his toroidial variance levels hit their mark.”

Knock Out slowly shifted his optics from one blurry image of a red and white bot to another before he finally attempted to follow their gaze across the medbay. He could see another bot on the medslab, but between the drug haze and the distance and the multitude of lines and tubes running into the bot’s frame, he could not make out a face. “Who is that?”

“That’s Bee,” First Aid said, turning to look back down to Knock Out. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Bumblebee?” Knock Out blinked to the unclear image. Even in his current state he could tell there was something seriously wrong, they wouldn’t have had him attached to so many machines otherwise. “Oh slag, is he okay?” He looked back to the two mechs hovering over him, and then suddenly his processors finally caught up with some of the events that had taken place cycles ago. The exact details were fuzzy, but several distinct images were filtering through from his memory banks. “We were on the bridge…”

First Aid and Ratchet exchanged looks for a moment before glancing back down. “Okay. Then what?” said First Aid.

“He was dead!” Knock Out’s optics widened at the recollection, and he quickly glanced back over to Bumblebee before turning to the pair once more. “He’s _not_ dead, is he!? Did he make it? He _made_ it, right!?”

“He’s _not_ dead, Knock Out!” Ratchet glared down at him, noting the fear and desperation in the other bot’s vocalizations. Ratchet was still uncertain whether or not this entire situation had been staged by the ex-‘Con. If Bumblebee _had_ died, Knock Out’s plan would have been a complete failure, so it was no surprise that he was in a near panic at not being certain of Bumblebee’s fate.

“What happened when you were on the bridge?” First Aid tried to guide Knock Out back into relaying the events. He extended his EM field outwards to convey reassurance and understanding while he was simultaneously aware that Ratchet was conveying the exact opposite. He gave the smallest of glares over to the older bot for that. Talk about a Medic with poor berthside manner.

“He was _dead_! _We_ were dead!” Knock Out looked to First Aid, easily drawn in by the offered signature from the other bot, though the next memories to filter in caused him to glance away in confusion. “Optimus… _He_ was there.”

First Aid slowly glanced up to Ratchet, who looked like he wasn’t believing a single word he was hearing, and who became visibly upset upon hearing Prime’s name. The older Medic glared, anger pulsing from his signature as he stepped away from the medslab to the counter and yanked open a drawer.

“What do you mean?” First Aid lowered the volume of his vocalizer, despite the fact that he knew Ratchet could still hear him as he continued his line of questioning. “Knock Out, what do you mean Optimus was there?”

For a moment, the imagine of Optimus Prime stood prominently in Knock Out’s databanks, but the more he tried to recall, the more the image shifted. All too quickly, the red and blue paint job of Optimus’s armor washed away to gleaming silver, the boxy contours elongated into sharp angles, and his blue optics darkened into glowing red embers.

“Megatron,” Knock Out barely whispered the name as his optics now stared straight up towards the ceiling at the images only he could see. Suddenly the horrors of Simanzi were flashing through his processor again. He covered his optics with his hand, pressing his thumb and fingers against his temples as he tried to force the pictures from his mind. His vocalizer trembled in fear when he spoke next. “Simanzi’s in my head, Ratchet!”

Ratchet froze in his place by the counter at the words. When he heard them, they were spoken in Bumblebee’s voice, not because Knock Out’s vocalizer was suddenly capable of replicating it, but because the only other time he had heard those exact words was when Bumblebee came rushing to him all those years ago and begged him to power him down, put him into stasis lock or throw him behind bars and _quickly_ , because Megatron was haunting his mind and Bumblebee could no longer control him from taking over completely.

But there was no way Knock Out would have known that conversation took place…..Unless Megatron had told him.

Ratchet audibly growled as he turned back to the drawer, finding the vial of Lytholine that he had been looking for all along and then moving back to the side of the medslab. Yes, Megatron must have told Knock Out of the experience; Ratchet could just picture the two Decepticons laughing over Bumblebee’s suffering and mental anguish. And now Knock Out was mocking him, Ratchet was certain. He shook his head, cursing them both and all Decepticons in general as he pushed several more microliters of the drug into the Energon lines running into Knock Out’s remaining servo.

First Aid watched Knock Out’s tense frame visibly relax within seconds, his hand falling away from his faceplates as he slipped offline again. Ratchet’s EM field filled the surrounding area with anger and distrust, causing First Aid to glare all the more. “You think he’s _making this all up?”_

“I think he’s hallucinating and needs to rest,” Ratchet lied as he moved to return the vial to the drawer.

“Hallucinating, yes. _Probably_ from all the _drugs_ you keep giving him,” First Aid glowered to Ratchet, then eyed Knock Out once more. “You heard him, though. He said they were dead…..He said he…he saw Prime.”

“First Aid,” Ratchet sighed, not wanting to start an argument, or have to explain his actions, or talk about Optimus Prime at _all_ , “he’s so hopped up on pain dampeners and sedatives he’s probably seeing _all_ the Primes sitting together at table playing Poker.”

“What’s ‘Poker’?”

 

When Knock Out finally came back online with enough of his sensibilities about him to distinguish that this was actual reality, he was unsure how much time had passed. He lay there and listened to the machines beeping and whirring, took in a small vent to analyze the scents and particles in the air, and determined that he was in the medbay, _his_ medbay. He had no recollection of having woken up and made this same determination four cycles ago.

He attempted to run some preliminary diagnostics on himself, but the efforts that took made his brain node hurt more than it should have, so he gave up on that idea, for now.

Instead, he started to slowly piece together the memories that were floating around in his data banks and fit them into a timeline that seemed to make sense. He was finally able to remember why he was laying there, where his other servo had gone off to, Prime on the bridge, and the shards of light….Maybe that wasn’t real, though? And Megatron in his mind. No, it was Bumblebee’s mind; they had called him “Bumblebee” when Knock Out was reliving the recall. And how was any of _that_ real?

He had no recollection of any of the real-life interactions he’d had with First Aid or Ratchet in the past cycles, or the brief conversations they’d had. He did recall seeing hazy figures standing by his side at some point, though he could not remember who they were.

Knock Out opened his optics, thankful the bay lights had been dimmed somewhat as he turned his head to take in his surroundings. In glancing to his left, he spotted Bumblebee across the way, his frame prone and unmoving. Knock Out spent the next several minutes focusing and recalibrating his optic lenses to try and make out the information on the monitor beside Bumblebee’s medslab, but it was too far away. He could always go in for a closer look, though….

Knock Out’s first attempt to raise himself from the slab was met with physical resistance. When he tried to push himself up with his remaining servo, his back tire and axel thudded against the underside of the berth, and he realized that Ratchet and First Aid had opened one of the back panels on the slab and fit his right shoulder tire through it, so that his frame was able to lay prone and completely flat. It was a convenient modification, Knock Out had used it frequently whenever any of the grounder Vehicons were in need of repairs and missing a wheel. He knew exactly how uncomfortable it was to try and lay back while missing a tire and have your entire frame tilting off to one side, completely off-balance.

He also knew that sometimes patients required some restraining, and apparently Ratchet had found those restraints, having activated the lock plates around the axel and under Knock Out’s remaining wheel to prevent him from sitting up. What Ratchet didn’t know was that the lock had an emergency release, which, to be fair, only Knock Out was aware of, because he’d been the one to install it. When the Nemesis was still under Megatron’s command, it was important to have covert safety precautions in place _everywhere_. If the Autobots only knew how many secret passageways and hidden firearms were stashed throughout this ship….. Knock Out had already decided to keep all those places and things to himself, for now.

Knock Out reached his hand down along the underside of the berth, running his fingers along the metal until they came into contact with a small lever.

“Strapping me in? How thoughtful of you,” he quietly spoke as he pushed against the lever with as many fingers as could reach it, smirking faintly at the sound of the locks clacking open, releasing him.

Here he paused, his optics shifting to the medbay door. He waited a full klick in case anyone heard the noise and was coming to investigate, but no bots emerged. Satisfied he was still alone, he brought his hand back up to his side and pushed himself up and out of the panel into a sitting position.

Knock Out’s second attempt to raise himself from the slab was met with internal resistance. When he sat up, he fully intended to swing his peds off the side and stand, but the moment he was sitting up straight, he suddenly felt himself slowly leaning all the way forward as wave of dizziness overtook his processor. He tried to steady himself with his left arm, forgot it wasn’t there, and startled when he felt himself falling to the left without the expected support, which set off all sorts of pain receptors shooting through his shoulder and chassis. When he finally managed to correct his frame back over to the right where he could lean his weight on his right servo, he was forced to shutter his optics and take the next few minutes to wait for the dizzy spell to dissipate. He took several slow, deep vents as a swell of nausea hit him and he tried to mentally convince the Energon threatening to leave his tanks that it was much better off if it stayed where it was supposed to be.

He did not remember sustaining any headwounds, although the rocket had detonated close enough to his cranium that he supposed he might still be feeling the effects from it. No, this felt more like that time he and Breakdown decided to have a little fun experimenting in mixing Radilomin with Engex. The high had been amazing until five hours later when “I’m _so_ fragged up!” turned into, “Oh God, I’m _too_ fragged up.” Whatever drugs they had him on right now were _not_ for recreational use. Suddenly, Bumblebee’s medslab seemed so much farther away than it had a few minutes ago.

But, no matter, Knock Out could access Bumblebee’s med specs from the monitor that hung in front of his own slab. The third time Knock Out pushed himself up, he did so slowly, pausing every few inches until he managed to both sit up straight _and_ get his peds onto the floor. Pleased with this albeit minor accomplishment, he slowly shuffled to the monitor station, giving a slow, long look towards the medbay door again. Still no sounds of footsteps; still no bots.

Back to the monitor, he took a few seconds to analyze his own vital lines, which were bouncing in several wavelengths across the screen. Nearly everything looked normal, though he noted his electronites and hydrazine levels were low. But his spark, Primus, what the _hell_ had they done to his spark!? He stared at the screen then brought his servo up to rub at his optics. Maybe he wasn’t reading it correctly?

According to the readouts, his spark was thrumming in his chest like he’d just come off the racetrack, though when he put his hand to his chest plates, he could feel no abnormal vibrations. There was, in fact, zero indication that he was apparently firing on all cylinders and then some, cylinders he didn’t think he had. Maybe it was the drugs? There were plenty of medications that could make a bot’s spark enlarge, act erratically, or increase its pulse to unhealthy levels.

_Optimus._ The shards of light. What if that _was_ real?

Knock Out slowly turned to glance over at Bumblebee again. If it _had_ been real, wouldn’t Bumblebee’s spark signature be of a similar wavelength? He turned to the screen once more and pressed a finger against it, tapping a few prompts until he was greeted by the login screen of the CMRD.

Standing was starting to become an issue. He could feel his frame running out of energy already, despite the apparent increase in spark strength, which deceptively did him no current good. He leaned back to sit on the edge of the medslab, pulled the monitor closer and typed his CMRD code into the site.

The words “USER AUTHENTICATION FAILED,” blinked back at him in bright white letters against the red background. Knock Out frowned and tried again, this time being deliberately slow when he entered his in his code, one careful digit at a time.

“USER AUTHENTICATION FAILED.”

“Oh, _come on_!”

“What the HELL do you think you’re doing!?” Ratchet’s very angry voice boomed across the medbay from where he stood at the entrance to the small office where he had, again unbeknownst to any bot, been getting a quick power down. For some reason, for the past few cycles, he was finding it easier to get some sleep in there than in his own quarters; the chair behind the desk was almost unnaturally comfortable.

Ratchet’s exclamation startled Knock Out so badly that he jumped up from the slab, knocking the monitor back into its original position over the vitals station as he bumped into it. Had it not been for the drugs still working their way out of his system, Knock Out would have easily recovered from the scare, but all of a sudden, the dizziness and the nausea and the pain from his leap back onto his peds were assaulting his processor all at once, and he felt himself sinking to the floor as consciousness threatened to leave him.

Knock Out could hear Ratchet’s heavy footfalls as he crossed the medbay and came around the side of the slab where Knock Out currently sat, hunched over with his hand over his optics.

“ _Well!_?” Ratchet narrowed his gaze, waiting for a response.

“You took my CMRD—” Knock Out started to say, but he was forced to pause when he had to quickly swallow back the Energon that rose up his throat, his remaining armor plates shivering lightly as he shuddered.

Not at all unfamiliar with the signs that a bot was about to purge, Ratchet stepped away from the medslab and to the edge of the counterspace, returning to set a waste receptacle in front of Knock Out, his glare still in place. “I took your CMRD code? Yes, I did. It wasn’t yours to begin with.”

Knock Out peered between his fingers at what Ratchet had brought and quickly reached for the metal container, dragging it close so he could hang his head over the edge. He grit his denta plates and cycled as many vents as it took to keep himself from purging. “These drugs,” he began, though he paused once more to swallow hard before continuing, “are _not_ the fun kind.”

“ _None_ of the drugs are supposed to be ‘fun’,” Ratchet glared as he watched him.

“I was just trying to see Bee’s med specs,” Knock Out finally managed to say, once he felt more in control of his tanks.

“That’s private medical information you no longer have the right to access. Strike that,” Ratchet rephrased, “That’s private medical information you _never_ had the right to access.”

“Will you just _tell_ me?” Knock Out said as he slowly sat up straight once more to lean against the base of the medslab and look up at Ratchet. “Will he be alright? What’s his status?”

Ratchet sighed, offering up a generalized answer. “He’s not ‘out of the woods yet’, as the humans say.” He was quietly surprised when Knock Out seemed to visibly wince at that news.

“I tried to buy him some time out there,” Knock Out brought his hand over his optics once more as he tried to replay all of the procedures he had performed on Bumblebee under the Skyway. Maybe he had done something wrong? Maybe not enough? Maybe too much? “I thought it would work….”

Suddenly, Ratchet felt a pang of guilt. He still did not trust Knock Out, but he knew what it was like to doubt yourself and the work you had performed on a bot when the outcome was less than desirable. Despite the mistrust, he tried to offer some words of comfort.

“It _did_ work. Your actions most certainly saved him from bleeding out before we were able to Groundbridge him back,” which was entirely true. Ratchet may not be certain as to how Bumblebee had fallen but Knock Out’s action and quick fixes had made all the difference, he would not deny that. “You did a good job, Knock Out. You saved him.”

Knock Out was peeking through his pointy fingers up at Ratchet, like he was afraid of how the older Medic would respond, so his look of shock was well hidden when Ratchet actually praised him for his efforts. He could not recall the last time any bot had told him he had done a good job, at _anything_. It had been _years._

“Let’s get you back on the slab,” Ratchet said.

“Give me a few klicks,” Knock Out cringed at the idea of standing again, “my internal gyrostat is out of whack.”

“That’s what happens when you get up too soon after sustaining extensive injuries.”

“It’s not that. You’ve got me on _way_ too may drugs,” Knock Out lowered his hand so he could look up to Ratchet again. “I want _off_.”

Ratchet again glared down at the two red optics glowing up at him from the shadows of the medslab, “They’re for the pain.”

“Well, a little _more_ dampener and a lot _less_ sedative would be appreciated.”

“And I’d appreciate it if you’d _not_ get off your slab when you can barely stand. Come on,” Ratchet leaned down, taking Knock Out under his one servo, hoisting him upwards and guiding him to sit back down and shift his peds back up onto the medslab. He made sure to shove the waste receptacle into Knock Out’s hand in anticipation of him needing it after all of the physical movement.

Knock Out went rigid when Ratchet moved close, unsure of the mech’s true intentions, though in the end Ratchet really did help him up. He supposed he shouldn’t have doubted Ratchet, Autobots had a general tendency to stick to their word, but Knock Out was not one to trust any bot his size or larger whenever they got too close to his frame for comfort.

As though on cue, Knock Out felt his tanks nearly flip over in his lower chassis, and he quickly brought the metal can to his chin, though he was determined not to spew fuel in front of Ratchet, as though doing so was somehow a sign of weakness. _Deep vents, in and out. Everything will be fine._ He was suddenly aware of Ratchet touching his arm, and he tried to very slightly leaned away without making it obvious, though it was hard to concentrate on two things at once.

Ratchet moved to double-check that the Energon line and cable jack running into Knock Out’s servo had not become loose when he collapsed, and he noted how the other mech shied away from his touch, even as he struggled not to toss his tanks. Knock Out clearly had more sense and awareness about himself than the last time they had spoken. Perhaps now was a good time to continue that conversation.

Satisfied that the line was still secure, Ratchet stepped several feet away from the slab, hoping some more space would convince the ex-‘Con to talk. “Knock Out, what the hell happened out there? Can you recall anything?” Ratchet did not mention that he would be corroborating Knock Out’s story with Bumblebee as soon as the other mech was functioning and able. He was giving Knock Out the opportunity to tell the truth here and now, that way the other mech could not say that he hadn’t been given every chance to explain his side of the story when he inevitably got caught in whatever lies he had been constructing this whole time.

Having managed to calm his tanks yet again and silently pleased with himself that he still had control over his frame and not the other way around, Knock Out lowered the container to rest it on the edge of the slab, his gaze finding Ratchet. He was able to pick up on the subtle hints of distrust now, which ticked him off. He’d always had every intention of telling the truth. “Bumblebee came to my cell yesterday morning...”

“It’s been four cycles since you two were brought in here,” Ratchet corrected him.

“It _has_?” Knock Out blinked, and quickly consulted with his chronometer, blinking at the truth to Ratchet’s words before he sent a glare in his direction. “Like I said, ‘too many drugs’. You’ve got me all fragged up on something, and I don’t like it.”

“Tell me what happened,” Ratchet returned the glare, prompting Knock Out to continue.

 Knock Out sighed, letting his gaze drop from Ratchet’s as he processed the recall from his memory banks. “Bumblebee came to my cell that morning and he said he wanted to go looking for nanowave microfilaments.”

“For the comms repairs?”

“Yes, I assume so. I told him I thought there might be some in one of Shockwave’s laboratories,” Knock Out eyed Ratchet again when he said this, frowning when he saw the doubt on the other mech’s optics. “It’s true, Ratchet. Shockwave has several labs scattered around the planet. Bumblebee took me to the nav station on the bridge and I marked them on the local grid, you can check them for yourself.”

“I will. And then what happened?”

“We topped off our Energon reserves and went outside.”

“And then?”

“And then he transformed and got ready to leave…and I,” Knock Out paused for a moment, so tempted to make it sound like this had all been Bumblebee’s idea, although he supposed it kind of was to begin with. He didn’t _tell_ Bumblebee to turn off the I/D Chip, he’d merely _hinted_ at it, “…I told him, how was I supposed to keep up when _I_ couldn’t transform? So, he shut the I/D Chip off…”

“He shut the _entire_ thing off!” Ratchet snapped back at Knock Out, crossing his servos over his chassis.

“ _I_ didn’t know that! When he told me he shut it off, I assumed he only meant the Inhibitor so I could transform!”

“I turned it back on, by the way,” said Ratchet, still scowling.

“Oh, _good_!” Knock Out glared right back, “Because I’m such a _threat_ in my current state!”

“What happened next?”

“We started driving to the first laboratory site,” Knock Out sighed again, quickly realizing that he just did not have the energy to maintain any level of anger at the moment, and he dropped his gaze from Ratchet once more, eyeing his peds instead. “We took the Skyway on-ramp towards Iacon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bumblebee hit a pothole on the bridge and it kicked him off the edge…”

“He must have been going _awfully_ fast for that to have happen,” Ratchet continued to send an icy-blue glare in Knock Out’s direction. “How fast _were_ you going?”

“…..Pretty fast,” Knock Out hesitated to say more.

“And why were you going ‘pretty fast’?”

“…Well we…..We were racing, and—"

“You _stupid_ -aft kids,” Ratchet grumbled, sighing as he rubbed a hand down his faceplates. “And THEN what?”

“…and he went off the edge and he fell onto a rusted support strut.”

Ratchet let his hand drop back to his side, trying to convey the seriousness of Bumblebee’s wounds to the stupid mech before him, as though he might not already be aware. “Yes, and he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get a _rust infection_ at the wound site!”

“Will you just let me see his med specs?” Knock Out finally looked back up to meet Ratchet’s optics. “You’ve got _three_ Medics on this ship! If we all work together I’m sure we can –”

“I had to remove his T-cog because it was a twisted mess,” Ratchet did not allow Knock Out to finish his sentence as he pointed over to the lump of metal he had pulled from Bumblebee’s frame, that ruined piece of hardware that First Aid was trying to salvage, that First Aid was certain they could fix if they just tried hard enough. “I don’t have a replacement.”

Knock Out gaped to Ratchet at that before he slowly lowered his head, his shoulder slumped. Had there ever been a Commander, Autobot or Decepticon, who had led their bots successfully without a T-cog, without the ability to transform? Knock Out could not recall a single one. He looked again over to where Bumblebee lay and realized how absolutely fragged the mech might really be.

“Whose idea was it to race, Knock Out?”

Ratchet’s words brought Knock Out from his daze and he blinked back to the older Medic, though he found that he could not hold his gaze as the guilt hit him like a fusion cannon. “Does that really mat—”

“Whose. Idea. _Was it_?” Ratchet sternly repeated, and he saw Knock Out wince at the tone in his voice.

Knock Out could have lied, he knew he could have lied and said it was all Bumblebee’s fault, but he didn’t. “It was _my_ idea, but…”

Ratchet audibly growled and started to stalk angerly back towards the side office.

“But he _agreed_!” Knock Out watched him go, suddenly terrified of the implications all of this had on his standing among the Autobots. “Bumblebee _agreed_ to it! He made his own choice! This isn’t _my_ fragging fault! It could have been either _one_ of us to hit that pothole!”

Ratchet stopped in his tracks and swiftly turned back, advancing on Knock Out’s slab with an EM field ahead of him that pulsed with something very close to rage. He ripped the waste receptacle from Knock Out’s hand and slammed it down on the floor beside the medslab. “If Bumblebee dies, if this kills him, I’ll activate that Deterrence portion of your I/D Chip and lock you up in stasis for the _rest_ _of eternity_! I _promise_ you that!”

Ratchet was not aware that he had balled his hand into a fist and swung it up and then down towards the floor to help emphasize how seriously livid he was as he spoke, but Knock Out was _very_ aware of that gesture and signature, and he quickly put his servo over his head and tried to make himself as small as possible. This was fine. Knock Out was certain that in his current state, he would only be able to take a single hit before his sensors offlined, so at least it would be over quick.

The momentary flare of anger that was coursing through Ratchet’s processor quickly burned out and died completely when he saw Knock Out recoiling away from him. Ratchet was not used to bots cowering in his presence, even when he was mad. Primus, how many times had he been forced to yell and demand that his Autobot comrades follow his orders for the sake of their own health, and _still_ they did not listen all of the time? But they had never expressed a fear of him when he gave those orders, so the sight of a bot showing genuine anxiety at his reaction to something unnerved him. Yes, he was angry, yes, he was placing blame on Knock Out, whether that was fair or not, but he did not like it that his anger scared another bot into submission, even if it was a ‘Con, an _ex-‘Con_.

“Oh, for slag’s sake, Knock Out,” Ratchet sighed, dropping his shoulders, “I’m not going to _hit_ you!”

Knock Out laughed nervously from under his servo, even as he kept his optics shuttered tight, waiting to be struck, and his frame trembled as some deep-seated fear surfaced from his memory banks and entered his processor. “ _Everything_ about you is telling me otherwise.”

Ratchet backed away from the medslab then, suddenly embarrassed that he’d let his anger get the better of him, though he would never admit that to Knock Out, _or anyone_ , really. If First Aid had been there, the smaller bot would have called him out on it immediately. “You should really lay back down, Knock Out. Lay down and recharge for a while.” He refused to apologize for his outburst, however. If he apologized, that meant he was wrong, and he very much wanted to make it clear that Knock Out was the one who was in the wrong here, for suggesting that he and Bumblebee race on dangerous, unknown terrain. He eyed Knock Out one last time before turning his back to the other bot and heading back towards the office.

Knock Out watched Ratchet walk away from under the safety if his servo, which was still slung protectively over his head. He waited until Ratchet disappeared into the office completely before he finally lowered his arm, staring at the now-closed office door. _His_ office door. Except that it wasn’t his office anymore, was it? Knock Out was able to generate about three seconds of fury over that fact before his frame failed him and complete exhaustion took over. He did finally lay back and curl up on his right side, burying his faceplates into his hand as a final shudder of fear left him. He tried to convince himself that Ratchet’s words were true, of _course_ he wouldn’t hit him. Right? Of course not. That wasn’t how Autobots operated, was it? Knock Out found that he was only able to question Ratchet’s motives for a few more seconds before his processor shut down, the exhaustion of the past hour’s events finally catching up with him as he slipped offline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on units of time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	14. A Connection

Ratchet had followed through with his statement to Knock Out that he would check the navigation system on the bridge for the locations of Shockwave’s laboratories, and he was surprised to find Knock Out had told the truth. The past evening Ratchet, Bulkhead and Arcee had stood before the wide grid-map screen, speculating on which marked location to seek out first. They eventually agreed upon the laboratory south of the Nemesis, the one closest to the coordinates Bumblebee had sent them in his request for help nearly a week ago. Ratchet did not want to hedge his bets on the word of an ex-‘Con, but they were desperate for those microfilaments, and all out of other options.

The night had again been long and tense inside the medbay. While Knock Out finally slept straight through, Bumblebee had not taken well to being roused from the medically-induced stasis the Medics had kept him in since his fall. In his barely conscious state, he had repeatedly called out for Breakdown, a name that made both Medics raise their brows to one another as they struggled to keep Bumblebee in a state of calm. In the end, they sent him back under with another round of sedatives and hoped that he would fare better the following day.

The next morning, Bulkhead and Arcee headed off towards the southern location, choosing to drive instead of wasting precious energy on a Groundbridge. Ratchet had seen them off, and watched as the clouds of dust kicked up from their tires became smaller and smaller in the distance. There was a time when he would have been jealous of them, of their mission, their _adventure_. How many times had Ratchet stood back and watched the dust clouds of other bots fade into the distance as they headed out to save the world, if not the entire galaxy? How many times had he stayed back at the base, silently envious of their warrior functions, their bravery in a firefight, the comradery they formed on the battlefield? He had lost count. It wasn’t that he disliked being a Medic. To be certain, he truly loved his function and the work it entailed; saving lives on the medslab came with the same rush of catalycin as being in the heat of battle, but for a long time, that simply wasn’t enough for him.

The dust clouds now completely out of sight, Ratchet turned and started back towards the medbay, making sure the wide hangar bay door sealed behind him.

In his younger years, he would have let that jealously eat away at him for deca-cycles on end until he’d forced his way into joining them all for the next battle, or convinced Optimus to allow him to tag along. Ratchet could hold his own in combat, to a point, but he knew whenever he fought alongside the other Autobots, they were all keeping an optic on him, making sure he didn’t take too many hard hits, making sure he didn’t get surrounded by too many enemies at once.

Ratchet had always assumed the other ‘Bots looked after him because he was so lacking in physical strength by comparison, though he was a fairly decent shot with a laser pistol, and give him a wrench, he could crack any bot in the head from several meters away. He soon came to realize however, that it was because of his advanced age as well. More and more, he realized what a liability he was out in the field. His final attempt at becoming their combative equal had been disastrous. He had been such a fool to think that Synthetic Energon was the key to physical prowess, but the moment he realized the green substance’s properties, he just couldn’t help himself. He knew it was wrong, he knew that injecting synthetics into one’s Energon lines was just as bad as uploading circuit-boosters into one’s brain-node, but for those few cycles, he could actually compete with the speed of Bumblebee, the strength of Bulkhead and the power of Optimus Prime himself, and it had been _amazing_. He hated to admit it to himself, but he’d enjoyed every minute of it. Until his actions put the rest of the Autobots in danger, that is. Even Miko had scolded him after that whole incident: “You shouldn’t be using Cyber-meth, Ratchet! Drugs are _bad_ for you!” It had taken First Aid several cycles to forgive him, which was much, _much_ longer than normal for the bot.

Sighing as the recall of humiliation ran through his processor at the memory, Ratchet walked down the ramp of the medbay, flicking his gaze to the monitor beside Knock Out’s slab as he passed it by, then to Bumblebee’s as he past it by as well. Thankful all the vital lines were steady, Ratchet retreated into the back office, reclaiming his new favorite place to sit and sleep: the chair behind Knock Out’s former desk. He yanked the lever on the right side of the chair and leaned back as it reclined. Yes, he could totally see Knock Out sitting here, not helping anyone in need of medical assistance, but then again, Ratchet could _almost_ not fault him for that, given the comfort of the furniture.

His mind drifting back to the recall, he set his elbow joints on the arm rests of the chair, holding his hands up before him. It was one thing to feel old on the battlefield amongst young warrior bots, but these days he was feeling old even in the medbay. His hands often ached at the end of the cycle, though he never spoke a word of it to anyone. He knew First Aid was aware there was _something_ going on with them, as more than once one or the other had frozen up on him and he’d been forced to beat it back into functionality with a rubber mallet. That violent fix kept his fingers limber for another few cycles before they would seize up again and force him to repeat the process. Thank Primus they didn’t go stiff while he was performing surgery on Bumblebee. The mere thought of his hands failing him at his actual function was terrifying. If he was no use in a medbay, he was done for.

Pushing those thoughts away from his processor, Ratchet crossed his servos over his chest and dimmed his optics. As usual, he promised himself he would only power down for a few klicks. He had the frequency of Bumblebee and Knock Out’s vital monitors wirelessly pinging the data screen imbedded in his servo so that if one of them were to become critical, he would instantly be alerted. Ten minutes, just ten minutes, and he’d get back up…

Four hours later, Ratchet was startled back online by the chime of Arcee’s private line registering on his internal comm. He quickly raised a hand, tapping a finger against the side of his head. “Yes! Yes…umm,” Ratchet pushed himself forward, clicking the seat’s recliner back into position as he sat up, one hand going up to rub at his optics. “Go ahead.”

“Ratchet? It’s Arcee and Bulk. We’re about thirty klicks from base.”

“Alright, I’ll make sure the front door is open,” Ratchet said as he stood and started back towards the hangar.

“Great. Arcee out.”

Ratchet gave the obligatory glance to the two monitors as he left the medbay, pleased that all was still quiet. He stretched as he walked down the dark corridors of the Nemesis, placing one hand in the other to crack his finger joints into his palm. He was not surprised to find from his chronometer reading that he’s been powered down for four hours instead of ten minutes. Hmm, achy joints, unregulated sleep patterns, feelings of worthlessness…Yes, he was old. He was _certainly_ old, and _not_ depressed, no, not that.

Back in the hangar, Ratchet stepped to the control panel, tapping at the screen console and glancing back as the large door to the shuttle bay slowly began to creak open. Sunlight poured in, drenching his frame and the bay’s interior with a warm, welcoming glow. He moved to the dock’s edge, engaging the drive ramp to the ground below with a kick to the lever from one of his peds. With stiff movements, he lowered himself down to sit on the dock’s edge, both peds hanging over the side as he squinted through the sunlight. Not too far off in the distance, he could see the Well Of AllSparks. It was the first time he had laid optics on it since….

 

Knock Out was having that nightmare again, the one where he and Breakdown were stuck in the same white room together, separated by a piece of glass. The glass was thick. It did not matter how hard Breakdown pounded at it with his fists, or how many times Knock Out tried to slice through it with his circular saw, neither of them could break through. Knock Out could see Breakdown’s face, see his lips moving and forming words, but he could not hear him, and Knock Out knew that when he spoke, Breakdown could not hear his voice, either. But Knock Out still called out to him, still screamed his name in frustration when it felt like entire cycles had passed that they were stuck in the room together, able to see one another but never hear each other’s voices or touch each other, forever separated by the glass wall.

Knock Out had dreamt this false recall a thousand times at least, and always he had woken up screaming Breakdown’s name, but this time it was different. This time when he awoke, it was not his voice he heard calling out for his partner, but Bumblebee’s.

Snapping his optic shutters wide open, Knock Out listened as Bumblebee wept and stuttered out an apology to First Aid, who Knock Out could now hear trying desperately to talk some sense into the bot. Knock Out boosted the reception on his audials, attempting to decipher the quiet words First Aid was speaking, but the distance and the low-level hums and beeps of the medbay equipment made them impossible to isolate.

Within three minutes, Bumblebee was silent again. Hearing First Aid’s pedsteps approach, though they were significantly softer than most of the bots due to his size, Knock Out shuttered his optics once more. First Aid’s EM field preceded him, still projecting a calming reassurance so compelling that Knock Out actually felt himself relaxing. He could sense First Aid’s frame standing right beside the medslab for a few seconds before the other bot turned and walked away, up the ramp and out through the sliding door of the medbay, which closed behind him.

Knock Out waited a moment before slowly opening one optic, then the other, once he was convinced First Aid would not be immediately returning. He listened for any sound coming from the other occupied medslab and was again met with silence.

Despite First Aid’s briefly soothing presence, the fact that Bumblebee had been sobbing Breakdown’s name only moments ago was deeply unsettling. What reason would _Bumblebee_ have to be so upset about him? Knock Out pondered several possibilities, his gaze refocusing on his internal screen as he initiated a diagnostic check of his frame. A quick glance at his chronometer told him it had been approximately thirteen hours since he was last online.

Knock Out recalled the conversation he’d had with Ratchet. He recalled Ratchet telling him not to leave the medslab. He recalled that Ratchet failed to secure his right shoulder wheel back into the axel lock.

Judging by the preliminary diagnostic report scrolling down the left side of Knock Out’s HUD, he was far more confident that he could successfully remain standing for more than five minutes this time around. Still, Knock Out knew he had to be patient with himself. How many times had he berated Starscream when the Seeker refused to follow his medical advice to stay put and not overexert himself while trying to recover from serious injury? Then again, very few Medics practiced what they preached, and Knock Out was no exception.

Very slowly, Knock Out shifted one ped onto the medbay floor.

 

Lost in thoughts and emotions he was still struggling to understand, Ratchet did not hear First Aid approaching along the dock until the bot was but five meters away from him. He turned from his view of the Well, glancing over his shoulder only to be met with an offering of an Energon cube, which he graciously accepted. “Thank you, First Aid.”

“No problem,” Ratchet could hear the smile in First Aid’s voice as the smaller Medic stepped to the edge of the dock, claiming a seat there beside him. First Aid retracted his mask to sip from his own Energon cube, revealing his mouth and protoskin that had long-since healed and been repaired from those earlier days when he had first encountered Knock Out on the very same planet First Aid and Ratchet now surveyed before them. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Just imagine what it will look like when the city is really up and running again, with bots and buildings and roadways, just like before. It’ll be amazing then.”

“Yes, it will,” Ratchet smiled back, because First Aid’s continual optimism pretty much always gave him reason to smile, even if it took Ratchet himself a few hours to come to that point.

“I checked in on the medbay before I went to get the cubes,” said First Aid. “Bee’s looking much better. His lepton levels are up and his rubidium levels are down, so that’s good. I replenished the nanites, but that was the last batch in our supply. Hopefully that’s all it takes,” First Aid paused for a moment, tilting the Energon back and forth in the cube container. “He uh….he woke up yelling Breakdown’s name again while I was in there,” he said, glancing over and up to Ratchet as he said the words. “I managed to get him settled. He was powering down again when I left to get these, but…,” he let the sentence trail off, though he was forced to start again when Ratchet said nothing in response and merely scowled into his cube as he took another swig from it. “I don’t understand where he’s coming up with that, or _why_.”

“I think he’s disoriented and confused and the drugs we have him on were messing with his mind, just like any other bot coming out of unconsciousness,” Ratchet mumbled in response over the rim of the Energon cube. “You’ve seen stuff like that happen a million times, First Aid.”

“Not like _that_ I haven’t. That was _real_ ,” First Aid tried to catch Ratchet’s eye, setting his elbow joints on his legs as he leaned forward. “Those feelings he was having? They were _real_. It wasn’t his mind struggling to process everything as it came back online, Bee was really feeling that sadness. Couldn’t you tell? Couldn’t you hear it in his voice and feel it in his signature?”

“You know you’ve always been particularly sensitive to those kinds of things.”

“That’s my point exactly! I can _tell_ when a bot is genuinely sad, Ratchet, I can _feel_ it!” First Aid stared up at Ratchet for a moment, then swallowed hard, daring to finally broach the topic he’d been avoiding for nearly two deca-cycles. “I know how sad _you’ve_ been about Optimus.”

That was enough to get Ratchet to finally make optic-contact with First Aid, and he did not look happy. “Don’t you _dare_ get into this with me right now.”

“I know how sad you’ve been and it’s _okay_ to be sad! We’re _all_ sad! It was an incredibly noble but incredibly sparkbreaking thing that Optimus did for us! Primus, you’re _allowed_ to feel grief, Ratchet! You’re allowed to mourn! For as long as it takes!”

“If you’re so _good_ at reading bots, First Aid,” Ratchet glared down to the smaller mech as he lowered his Energon cube, “then tell me: Why, when Bumblebee came back online, why was he crying and carrying on and _sad_ about _Breakdown_? Why was it _Breakdown’s_ name he was calling and not Optimus’s?”

“I…,” First Aid paused, blinking to that line of questioning. He had not looked at it that way before. Of course they _were_ all grieving, but Bumblebee’s sudden sadness over Breakdown’s death, which happened nearly two mega-cycles ago, came at an odd time, when anyone would have naturally assumed that Bumblebee ought to be distraught not over a Decepticon’s death, but over the death of his leader and beloved friend. “I don’t know,” was all First Aid could say to that, and he sighed, dropping the subject immediately. They two sat, silent for a time as Ratchet’s EM field pulsed with annoyance. First Aid took another sip from his cube before speaking again. “When are you gonna tell him about the T-cog?”

It was Ratchet’s turn to sigh, his optics focusing on the ground below their peds. “When I’m certain we can’t repair it.”

“I dunno, Ratchet. I spent four groons on that thing last night, and…I think you were right from the get-go. It can’t be saved,” First Aid shook his head.

“I’ll give it one more try, later today,” Ratchet said solemnly, though they both knew it was already a lost cause. He quietly finished the rest of his cube, then squinted back out into the daylight, his optics and internal HUD registering two fast-approaching forms. “Well, hopefully here comes some good news.”

First Aid looked up as well, watching as the blue motorcycle and green SUV came rolling in, Arcee of course in the lead. He and Ratchet both stood as the vehicles approached, both moving to the ramp and down to ground level as Arcee and Bulkhead’s vehicular forms shifted as they transformed.

Ratchet instantly noted the way Bulkhead cringed after the transformation, one of his large servos moving to his back. Primus, did they have _another_ bot down, now!? “Oh for…What happened to _you_!?”

“Well,” Arcee glanced to Bulkhead, then back to Ratchet and First Aid, “Knock Out was right. The very first lab we hit had a full stock of nanowave microfilaments. Bulkhead’s got them in his subspaces.”

“Yeah, but the lab was also…,” Bulkhead started but paused to tap a finger on his jutting silver chin. “What’s that word that always made Miko laugh?”

“Booby-trapped,” said Arcee.

“Yeah, _that’s_ the one!”

“Bulk stepped right on a spring-loaded gravitron mine,” Arcee shrugged, then sent a smirk up to him. “I haven’t seen you jump like that since you thought you saw another Scraplet back on Earth.”

“Well it that creature looked _just_ like one!” Bulkhead said, scowling back down to Arcee as though her words had offended his mechhood.

“It was an armadillo, Bulk,” Arcee continued to smile, recalling the high-pitched shriek the supposedly fearless Wrecker had made at the sight of the tiny Earth animal the day they encountered it at the side of a road.

“Whatever. Those things are freaky. Organics shouldn’t have armor plating, it’s _weird_.”

“Speaking of armor plating,” said Ratchet, who had had moved around behind Bulkhead to assess the damage, “yours really saved you this time.” He eyed the holes and pockmarks that riddled Bulkhead’s backplates.  “Does anything hurt?”

“Right here,” Bulkhead pointed blindly to a spot on his lower back, toward a particularly large puncture, “But only a little.”

“Hmm, I’ll need to take this off to get to your protoplating,” Ratchet touched a hand to an undamaged part of Bulkhead’s back before he moved around the much larger mech and headed for the ramp. “C’mon back in with me,” he sighed. A Medic’s work was never done. “And if you feel like giving Knock Out a piece of your mind, I promise I’ll look the other way,” he muttered, his words meant only for Bulkhead to hear, though First Aid’s audials picked up on them as Ratchet passed him by to hand him the empty Energon cube.

“Ratchet!” First Aid scolded him as he took the cube.

“I’m not gonna hit him, relax, First Aid,” Bulkhead rolled his optics as he popped open his subspaces, removing the wide rolls of nanowave microfilaments and handing them off to Arcee. “As much as I’d like to…”

“I’ll grab Smokescreen and we’ll start laying this stuff out,” Acree said behind the stacks of rolled foil in her servos. She followed Ratchet, First Aid and Bulkhead up the ramp and back into the ship before departing down a separate corridor. First Aid remained in the hangar to ensure the bay door sealed properly once it closed, giving Ratchet and Bulkhead a head start as they walked toward the medbay.

“Any sign of Wheeljack?” Ratchet ventured to Bulkhead as they walked. He was accustomed to Wheeljack’s tantrums and departures by now, they all were, but he hadn’t seen nor heard the mech all week, and he could tell that his absence bothered Bulkhead.

“Yeah,” Bulkhead vented a sigh, rolling his optics as he plodded along after Ratchet, “I saw him out by the Jackhammer on our way back in. I think he’s trying to fix it.”

Ratchet scoffed as they rounded a corner. “That ship is beyond repair at this point, surely he knows that.”

“I know, but I don’t have time to go argue with him about it, Ratchet. He’ll come back around….eventually,” Bulkhead sounded hopeful, but in his spark, he knew “eventually” could mean several mega-cycles, if Wheeljack was angry enough. “You know how he is.”

“Yes, well, we could really use his help around here,” Ratchet muttered. “Not to mention he owes Knock Out an apology, as much as I….genuinely _dislike_ saying that aloud,” truly, Ratchet was surprised those words even managed to come out of his mouth when they did.

Bulkhead laughed out loud to that, forced to stop in the hallway as he leaned a servo against the wall, the other clutching his side as he cracked up. “Oh, please! Like _that’s_ ever gonna happen! Hahaha! Ahhh, you’re a funny bot, Ratchet,” Bulkhead finally collected himself and started after Ratchet again, who was standing in the middle of the hallway, servos on his hips as he glared to the Wrecker.

“He almost killed him. And Knock Out _did_ save Bumblebee out there. I think that at least deserves a ‘sorry’. Call me old fashioned.”

“Well….’” Bulkhead merely shrugged.

“Optimus would have made him apologize.”

“Alright, I you’ve got me there,” Bulkhead had to concede that. Still, he could not fathom a world where Wheeljack apologized for…well, _anything_ , really. Wheeljack would say that apologies weren’t “the Wrecker way”.  He quickly changed the subject. “How’s Bee?”

“He’s coming around.”

“Well, tell him to hurry up, this planet isn’t going to lead itself.”

 

Vitals monitors were sensitive pieces of equipment. Hook any bot into one with the cable jack, and the machine would start spitting out data in the blink of an optic shutter. Energon levels and consumption, brain node activity, power cell recharge rate, spark rate, spark output, spark pulse, _so many_ optional readings on a bot’s spark could be monitored all at once, and all of that data could be recorded into the machine’s hard drive. If a Medic had to step away from the monitor for any given amount of time, they could have all that data wirelessly streamed to their integrated servo data pad, giving them the ability to monitor their patients from afar.

As Knock Out now stood before the vitals monitor beside his slab, he quickly reached forward to tap his pointy fingers on the display screen. Unlike the CMRD, vitals monitors could not be locked, which meant he had full access to everything.

Noting that the monitor was indeed recording, he opened a separate file within the hard drive, saving two klicks-worth of his vital readouts, then set the recording on an infinite loop. He played the file for several minutes, making sure the loop was seamless before he raised his remaining servo to his mouth. His denta plates clenched hard on the cable that connected him to the vitals monitor, he tugged the jack free from his arm with a quick twist of his head to the side. There would be one second where the live feed of his vitals would be disrupted before the monitoring station picked up and transmitted the playback of his recording. With any luck, Ratchet and First Aid wouldn’t notice.

Next order of business was the Energon line. Knock Out plucked the cable jack from his mouth with his hand and draped it over the monitor station, then clamped his denta plates down on the Energon line still trailing from his servo, and yanked that free from his arm as well. Droplets of the blue liquid oozed from the end of the line as Knock Out set it into the waste receptacle that still sat beside his medslab. Finally free from all ties to the vitals monitor, he took a quick look to the exit, then eased his way over to the countertops that ran along the walls of the medbay, where there was less light. It would be just his luck that one of the Medics would notice the nanoklick of time his vitals disappeared, or that halfway to Bumblebee’s slab, he would get the sudden urge to pass out, so he played it as safe as possible, sticking to the shadows, running his hand along the counter for support in case he needed it.

Because Knock Out was keeping in constant contact with the counter, before he reached Bumblebee, he came across a container of propex solution, and within it, Bumblebee’s decimated T-cog. With growing concern, Knock Out stared into the glass cannister, his programming analyzing the data collected by his optics as they focused on the piece of metal suspended in the liquid. Ratchet had said earlier that the organ was a lost cause. Knock Out did not want to believe that, but now that he could see it for himself, he knew Ratchet’s prognosis to be true. There was no saving the T-cog.

Knock Out felt a fresh wave of guilt wash over him. He refused to believe that what had transpired on the Skyway was _all_ his fault, surely Bumblebee was also to blame. The bot had readily agreed to the race and never protested their choice of paths. No, this wasn’t Knock Out’s fault alone, yet the sudden pang of guilt he was feeling made his spark literally hurt in his chest.

His head hung low, Knock Out slowly started toward Bumblebee once more, only to pause as he suddenly caught sight of his own reflection on a metal tray propped up against the wall to dry. He narrowed his optics, leaning over the counter to get a closer look at his face, all traces of guilt vanishing in an instant as he spotted the jagged line running from the left corner of his mouth and down under his chin. Mouthing the words “What the frag!?” to himself, lest his voice be heard by anyone, he traced a finger over the horrible welding job that now marred the protoskin of his face. _His face!_ Who the frag was responsible for _this_ hack job!? Bumblebee’s inability to transform completely forgotten, Knock Out turned his head back and forth, eyeing his reflection from several angles. Not only was the welding job completely atrocious, the left lower half of the red armor plating that ran down each side of his jawline was missing. _Missing._ Now his face was lopsided! And whoever made the weld hadn’t even bothered to match the color of the metal alloy to his protoskin! It wasn’t white, no, it was silver. It was a sloppy, silver, squiggling line that was _definitely_ going to leave a mark. These _fragging_ Autobots! _Fragging_ Wheeljack and his fragging rocket! _This_ was the thanks he got for saving Bumblebee!?

Knock Out quickly looked away from his reflection, clenching his denta in silent anger as he glared toward the medbay exit. He should leave. He should grab as many weapons from as many secret stashes in the ship as he could, as much Energon as his trunk could carry, and…..And then he remembered he couldn’t transform. Even if he had not been at the mercy of the I/D Chip, he was still missing a servo and his entire front left axel and tire. And there was no way he’d get anywhere fast on foot. Even if he managed to sneak off the ship, they had his GPS coordinates. That, and his escape would only make him look guilty, and this was _not_ his fault.

Inhaling deeply, he slowly released the air through his vents as he tried to calm his circuits. He knew he was about five nano-klicks from letting this situation completely overwhelm him, and that would be bad, _very_ bad. He shuttered his optics and squeezed his fingers and thumb against the sides of his head, concentrating on separating the emotions from the facts of his predicament before they could enter his processor. He boxed the emotions up into a tidy little data packet, and shifted that data elsewhere in his brain node to be dealt with later. His rage now completely forgotten, or rather, set aside, he turned and moved to Bumblebee’s medslab.

Knock Out’s initial intention to get this close to Bumblebee was to review his vitals, though now that he was standing right beside the medslab, he couldn’t help but run his gaze up and down Bumblebee’s form and try to get an assessment of his current medical state. He noted all of the patches bolted into place, the nanites working furiously to reconstruct the protoflesh, the drainage tubes from the wound site running clear. That was good. Everything looked good, well, as good as could be expected. Knock Out was so caught up in his evaluation that he did not notice the additional layer of calmness that had crept up on him the moment he had stepped within reach of Bumblebee’s EM field, a state which had nothing to do with his own efforts to calm himself only seconds ago.

Satisfied with the work Ratchet and First Aid had done, Knock Out next looked to the vitals monitor that stood beside Bumblebee’s medslab with the same scrutiny. He tried to make a full analysis, but Bumblebee’s sparklines caught his attention immediately. They were exactly the same as Knock Out’s own, he was certain of it. Bumblebee’s spark was pulsing like it belonged to a Phase Sixer.

Still uncertain of what all of this meant, Knock Out stepped closer to the machine, raising his servo to touch the screen and filter out the other vitals so he could focus on those that monitored the spark, but the quiet voice from the medslab instantly pulled his attention back to Bumblebee.

“Knock Out?” Bumblebee’s optics suddenly burned a brighter blue as they focused in on the bot standing beside him.

“Bee!” The vitals monitor forgotten, Knock Out turned back to the medslab, the guilt creeping back into his processor. “Did I wake you up? I’m _so_ sorry! I didn’t mean to –”

“You’re _alive_ ,” Bumblebee said, offering a faint smile at that realization. Then he blinked, as though finally realizing where he was. “ _We’re_ alive.”

“Of course we are,” Knock Out found himself smiling back, though he quickly corrected his face into a blank stare once he realized it, his eyes narrowing instead. “You’re only _just_ now coming around? Primus, and I thought they had _me_ on too many drugs. What are they giving you?” He picked up the Energon line running from Bumblebee’s servo to try and get a hint as to what sedative they had been administering.

“This… _is_ real….right?” Bumblebee stared out at the medbay, his optics dilating wide as he tried to take everything in at once.

“Of course it is,” Knock Out glanced up from the Energon line, watching Bumblebee struggle to clear the drug haze from his mind. “It’s okay, Bumblebee. You’re alright.”

“Optimus,” Bumblebee blinked back to Knock Out. For a mostly sedated bot, Bumblebee still had ridiculously fast reflexes. Before Knock Out could step back, Bumblebee had him snagged by the hand with one of his own, and his grip was tight. His blue optics calibrated on Knock Out’s face. “Optimus was real.  You saw him,” Bumblebee said, watching Knock Out as though only he knew the real answer. “You saw him, right? We were together…with him.”

Knock Out swallowed hard. Bumblebee’s touch was making him extremely nervous, yet the feeling was only momentary and quickly replaced by that sense of calm that seemed to hover around the medslab. In the back of his mind, Knock Out found that sense just as nerve-wracking, like he was being lulled into a sense of complacency, which, in his experience, never resulted in anything good. It was an exceptionally difficult sense to resist, however.

“Yes,” Knock Out finally replied, eyeing Bumblebee warily. “I did. I did see him.”

Bumblebee still clung to Knock Out’s hand with his own, like the red mech was his anchor to reality. His processor finally caught up with the memories he was running through it, his gaze briefly straying from Knock Out’s, his voice still just above a whisper. “He gave us something.”

“Yes,” Knock Out replied, but he did not want to say more than that. He didn’t understand what had happened, or why, which meant it was best to just not talk about it. He was suddenly aware of his spark hammering in his chassis so hard that he leaned forward and grabbed at his chest with his hand, startled by the feeling. It was not painful, not at all. Bumblebee did not release his grip, so that Knock Out was in fact pinning Bumblebee’s hand against him as well.

Suddenly, the vitals monitor beside Bumblebee’s medslab started to beep in alarm. Knock Out quickly looked to the screen, blinking at Bumblebee’s spark readouts, which bounced up and down to the rhythm of Knock Out’s own spark at a pulse that should have had them both writhing in agony.

Knock Out turned back to Bumblebee, about to speak when he heard as well as felt the *click* of his chest plate and protoform doors to his spark chamber start to open. In a panic, he stepped backwards, shaking his hand free of Bumblebee’s grasp and slamming his chest plate shut before it opened any further. At the same time, he watched, wide-eyed, as Bumblebee’s chest plates began to open as well, the brilliant yellow glow of his spark starting to pierce through the seams of the armor plating.

“What are you _doing!?_ ” Knock Out yelled at Bumblebee. Whatever this was, it must be Bumblebee’s fault because it _certainly_ wasn’t Knock Out’s.

“I’m not doing anything! I’m not doing this!” Bumblebee replied, looking between his chest and Knock Out’s and quickly following suit, slamming both his servos over his chest plates to keep them closed.

“What the frag is going ON in here!?” both Bumblebee and Knock Out simultaneously turned their heads to the entrance at the sound of Ratchet’s yelling voice, which carried over to them quite easily as he stormed down the ramp towards them. “Why is it that every time I come in here you’re not where you’re supposed to be!?” he pointed a finger to Knock Out.

Knock Out blinked back to Bumblebee, then to the vitals monitor, which was no longer alerting, the spark readouts still strong, but no longer bouncing wildly out of control. He turned back to Ratchet just as the Medic swiped him by the servo and started dragging him back to his medslab.

“Ratchet! I was just –”, Knock Out struggled to force his brain node to come up with an excuse other than the truth of whatever the Pit had just happened there. He was also not sure how much Ratchet had seen. “….He woke up and I just wanted to—”

“Ratchet, it’s okay!” Bumblebee offered from his slab, not wanting the Medic to fault Knock Out for merely wanting to see him. “He’s not bothering me!”

“He’s bothering _me!_ ”

“Bee! You’re awake!” Bulkhead’s round form dominated the entrance as he stepped down the ramp, a smile spread across his faceplates as he looked to Bumblebee, though as he passed by Ratchet tugging Knock Out behind him, he offered the ex ‘Con a small glare.

“Ahhh! _Gently!_ ” Knock Out yelped as Ratchet’s actions jostled his sore frame way too hard as he shoved him to sit back down onto the medslab. Knock Out tried to reroute his nerve circuits to displace some of the pain. “Are you trying to rip my other servo off!?”

“ _Yes_!” Ratchet moved to the wall behind the slab, tapping at a panel of buttons there with his fingers. A dim white light suddenly glowed from a break in the wall’s surface, and Ratchet pulled the privacy screen out from its storage space. He walked it from the wall all the way down the length of the medslab and several feet past its end before he locked it into place. The screen of translucent glass effectively blocked the view of the rest of the medbay, allowing only for shadows and shapes to be seen from each side. Not only did it block the view, it also blocked sound. Seconds ago, Bumblebee and Bulkhead could be heard speaking, but now there was nothing but the sounds of Ratchet’s engines revving in anger.

“Bulkhead and Arcee went to one of Shockwave’s labs that you so _kindly_ marked on the map!” Ratchet moved from the base of the medslab and over to the vitals monitor, cursing when he realized how Knock Out had managed to slip free of the cable. “Very tricky.”

Knock Out sat very still, partially from the pain he was experiencing, partially in case it looked like Ratchet was going to strike him. He was certain he could dodge the old Medic now, if he had to. “Did they get the microfilaments?” Maybe he could lighten the mood with some good news, assuming there _was_ good news?

“They _did!_ ” Ratchet grabbed Knock Out’s servo again, shoving the cable jack back into place. It made Knock Out flinch, but Ratchet chose to ignore that and the apprehension that was emanating from Knock Out’s EM field.  “And Bulkhead also got a back full of shrapnel!”

“ _What_?” Knock Out looked genuinely shocked. “Is he okay!?” He must be, he’d only just seen the big idiot walking past him a second ago, but he still asked the question.

“Apparently _someone_ placed a landmine!” Ratchet said as he replaced the Energon line into Knock Out’s servo as well. Then he popped open a subspace on his own left hip, producing a pair of stasis cuffs.

Knock Out spotted the cuffs immediately and blinked to Ratchet. “You think it was _me_!? I haven’t left this room in _five_ cycles!”

“I know it wasn’t _literally_ you, but you _knew_ the lab was rigged!” Ratchet slapped one cuff over Knock Out’s wrist, and the other through the horizontal opening the ran along the side of the berth. He still hadn’t figured out how Knock Out had managed to free himself from the axel lock on the medslab the first time, so he decided to move on to more traditional methods of restraint.

“ _No, I didn’t!_ ” Knock Out didn’t resist being cuffed, because he knew that would only anger Ratchet more, and now that they were out of optic and audial shot of Bumblebee and Bulkhead, there would be no witnesses if Ratchet _did_ try to harm him.  He knew he should be trying to deescalate the situation, but he was simultaneously outraged that Ratchet would think he would try to blow any of them up. “Don’t you think I would have _said_ something if I knew!?”

“Was that your plan along? To take Bumblebee out there so you could race him right into a mine field?!” Ratchet roared, taking advantage of the fact that only Knock Out could hear him.

“No!” Knock Out quickly swung his peds over the opposite side of the slab and stood, putting the berth between himself and Ratchet. The cuff forced his arm to extend across the slab to the other side and the stretch made his left side hurt like hell, but at least there was distance and a slab of metal between them. “I don’t HAVE any _plans_! I haven’t been to those labs in _ages_! NONE of them were rigged the last time I was there!” Knock Out could feel the overwhelming sense of panic start to rise up inside of him again. It did not help that Ratchet’s EM field was being projected directly at him and simultaneously bouncing off the privacy screen and back onto him again. But even if his processor was starting to short-circuit from the influx of emotions it had been asked to analyze in the past five minutes, his memory banks quickly offered up a solution, one that had worked in the past. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, my Lord! Please!” _Just_ _cry and beg for mercy a little bit longer, and it will all be over._

Ratchet narrowed his gaze at Knock Out’s pleadings, idly wondering if the bot was even aware he’d just called him “my Lord”. He could sense the confusion and hysteria pulsing from Knock Out’s EM field and suddenly realized just how easy it was to tip him over the edge. Push him too hard for answers, raise your voice and project your anger too much, and arrogant, self-righteous Knock Out turned into cowering, apologetic Knock Out. Ratchet could see how that tactic would have worked with Megatron, but it did not work with him.

“What are you sorry for if you haven’t _done_ anything?” Ratchet crossed his servos, watching Knock Out crouch down behind the slab, so that only his head and arm were still visible.

Knock Out’s optics flicked back and forth as he tried to find an answer to the question. Maybe apologizing didn’t make sense. _But then why offer that up as a viable solution, stupid brain!?_ Primus dammit, even his own mind was failing him now. “I…I don’t _know_. I don’t know what you want me to say!”

Ratchet watched Knock Out shiver with fear and he inwardly groaned to himself. Psychoanalysis, psychiatry, these were not Ratchet’s specialties, and this bot _clearly_ needed a specialist in those areas. Ratchet had never admitted it to anyone, but he had also failed “Berthside Manner 101”. Twice.

“I want you _say_ the truth. I want you to _tell_ me the truth!”

“I _am!_ I swear it!”

*Ahem!*

Both Ratchet and Knock Out blinked to the sound of First Aid clearing his vocalizer behind his now-replaced mask, the smaller Medic’s visor glaring to Ratchet as he spoke. “I think I’ll take over from here, Ratchet _. If you don’t mind_.”

“Not at all,” Ratchet muttered as he swiftly moved away from the medslab and past First Aid. “Bumblebee’s awake, if you’re interested.”

“I’m sure you can handle it,” First Aid glared after Ratchet, watching him disappear behind the other side of the privacy screen before he looked back to Knock Out with a sigh. “Are you okay? I’m sorry,” First Aid started toward him to help him up, “Ratchet can be a little –”

“ _Don’t_ touch me,” Knock Out flinched back as First Aid took a step closer, his optics narrowing at the new threat. Way too many bots had already put their hands on him today, and it was making him twitchy.

First Aid froze at the unexpected reaction, sensing Knock Out’s EM field flip from “flight” to “fight” in a second. Looks like the Lytholine finally wore off. “Okay,” he took a step back, silently casting out a signature of comfort.

Knock Out slowly pushed himself back up to his full height and inched his way back around to stand behind the top of the slab, so that he was as far away from First Aid and his EM field as he could get despite being cuffed to the rail, his gaze never leaving the Medic. “Take me back to my cell.”

“No,” First Aid said simply, eyeing the vitals monitor and the data there then looking to Knock Out again. “Not yet.” He watched Knock Out weighing his options at that response.

“Then draw the screen to the far wall,” Knock Out gave an up-nod with his chin to the wall that ran parallel to the medslab. Running the screen from where Ratchet had stopped it to that wall would effectively box Knock Out and the slab into the corner. If they refused to put him back in the cell, he’d make one around himself instead, not keep him _in_ , but to keep everyone else _out_. What he _really_ wanted was a hole to hide in where no one could see him or bother him or touch him, but he thought if he asked for that Ratchet might throw him into the Well.

“Alright,” First Aid nodded, and moved to the edge of the screen, kicking the stopper free from the floor panels with a ped. He extended the screen out a little further, then drew a finger down its length. Here a seam formed a corner, and then he walked the screen towards the far wall. “It’s not your fault, you know,” First Aid offered as he slowly moved along with the screen, looking over to Knock Out. “Ratchet told me what you told him, about what happened. It’s not your fault Bumblebee fell,” he stopped the screen several meters from the wall, leaving an opening wide enough for a bot at least Ratchet’s size to walk through. He set the stopper down into the floor panels again before slowly making his way back towards the medslab where Knock Out was still standing. “And I’m sorry Wheeljack shot you. You didn’t deserve that. You were just trying to save Bee,” First Aid continued to ease his calming signature outward.

Knock Out finally sat back down onto the medslab, though his frame continued to tremble despite his best efforts to hold still. And now First Aid was staring at him and being all apologetic and nice the way he always was so that one could never really stay angry at him very long for anything. The bot was good, Knock Out would give him that. He was _really_ good at deflecting anger away from himself. Maybe he would have been a useful addition to the Decepticon medbay after all?

“Can you just go away?” Knock Out asked, without acknowledging First Aid’s apology, without making so much as eye-contact with the smaller bot as he stared at the floor, but he added a word, in a minor attempt to be nice himself. “Please?”

“Sure thing, Knock Out,” First Aid turned to go, smiling despite the fact he was being told to leave, though the fear and apprehension from Knock Out’s signature that was filling the now small space honestly made him want to embrace Knock Out with his servos and EM field alike and convince him that everything would be okay. Something like that would likely get him kicked across the room, though; Decepticons probably hated hugs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	15. An Acknowledgement

Bumblebee lay prone on the medslab, his optics seemingly focused on a point high above him on the ceiling of the medbay, though his mind was somewhere else. It had been five cycles since he came back online to find Knock Out standing beside him, and many more cycles since he’d fallen off the bridge. Despite Ratchet and First Aid’s continual chatter and medical assessments of him as were necessary, Bumblebee had barely spoken to the Medics himself, except when Ratchet practically interrogated him for his version of what had “really happened on the bridge”, as Ratchet put it. Bumblebee had explained everything, recounting as many details as he could remember. From the interjecting questions Ratchet kept asking him, he could tell the mech was looking to pin all of it on Knock Out, so Bumblebee had been very deliberate in his responses in an attempt to shed a favorable light onto the ex-‘Con: No, of _course_ Knock Out hadn’t pushed him off the edge. Yes, Knock Out _did_ tell him to request the Groundbridge, yes, Knock Out _did_ patch him up while they waited. Yes, Wheeljack appeared from the Groundbridge and shot the rocket _without_ warning.

Bumblebee did not mention Optimus Prime, or the offering that was made. He did not mention the vision of experiencing the loss of Breakdown, or Megatron acting with kindness; Ratchet would have never believed him.  But the old Medic had seemed satisfied with the answers and explanations Bumblebee _did_ reveal, and Bumblebee was fairly certain that after that conversation, he saw something in Ratchet’s attitude shift. He swore he witnessed Ratchet glance to the privacy screen and the shadowy silhouette behind it with a hint of understanding behind his optics, and Bumblebee figured that at that point, it was all he could ask for.

And then Ratchet told him about his T-cog.

In truth, Bumblebee had already known it was gone, he knew the moment the sedatives from the past five cycles had finally cleared from his system just enough that was able to get his senses about him. This was not the first time Bumblebee had been without a T-cog, MECH having taken it from him before, several years ago. He had counted himself lucky to have gotten in back in once piece that time.

Bumblebee had recognized the sensation immediately, but it was easy to push it into the back of his processors, for now, as they were working overtime in his attempt to understand everything that had happened between Optimus and the vision afterward. Ratchet and First Aid mistook his contemplative silence for depression at the loss of his T-cog, and no amount of his reassurances that he was accepting of his unfortunate situation would suffice them. On the other hand, he was glad to have an excuse not to explain the true reason for his reverie.

He felt empty inside, as though his whole frame knew that something was literally missing, except somehow that physical change was interpreted by his processors as an emotional one. Many bots believed in Rossum’s Trinity, the notion that within all Transformers the spark, the brain node, and the transformation cog were inexplicably interlinked, that damage or removal of one piece of the trinity had the potential to cause damage or malfunction to the other. Although Rossum had been killed before he was ever able to extrapolate any real conclusive evidence from his theory, his initial publication on the subject had been well-received. Many bots who had taken damage to one or more of the three internal components had reported otherwise unexplained emotions ranging from simple feelings of loss to full-blown suicidal ideations.

As he had all those years ago, Ratchet again offered to transfer his own T-cog to Bumblebee, but Bumblebee had again refused. He would never expect any bot to give up such a valuable piece of themselves for him. In his mind, that was just cruel, as though it suggested that he was worthier of the ability to transform than someone else.

In spite of Ratchet and First Aid’s medical skills, Bumblebee was still hurting. They kept him on a steady stream of pain dampeners and he was already well-practiced in rerouting his nerve circuits to displace the discomfort, but there had been times when he came back online in complete agony, and he had spent way too many hours nauseated with his head hung over a waste receptacle wondering if his damaged tanks would ever allow him to process Energon normally again. He realized he should not expect much from his frame within barely a deca-cycle since his fall, but time had a way of ceasing to exist while he was laying there, and the guilt of not being able to assist the others in their projects to get the local area up and running again was making him restless. Now he understood why Ultra Magnus had only scowled at him when Bumblebee had stopped by to check in on the bot when Ratchet had him confined to quarters for their first few cycles back on Cybertron.

And yet Bumblebee was still able find solace in the fact, and he _did_ believe it was a fact and not some pain-induced delusion, that Optimus was still a force within the universe. Bumblebee had not forgotten Optimus’s final message as the Light took him and Knock Out back to the realm of the living. It was a comfort knowing that the Prime was still with him; the very thought of it made him smile. His previous sorrow and melancholy regarding Optimus’s death was lifted, now he was filled with hope. Despite his injuries, he no longer met each cycle with that sinking reminder that they had all lost someone dear to them, instead he looked forward to proving to Optimus what they were all capable of in his absence.

But what of “the Light”? What of the gift Optimus had given them, and the power it supposedly contained? Bumblebee certainly did not feel powerful now, as he finally broke his stare from the ceiling and turned his head to the right to look to the empty medslab across the room; he was not sure when they had moved Knock Out back to the brig. Bumblebee had woken up one cycle, and the bot was gone, the privacy screen pushed back into the wall to reveal an empty slab. Ratchet would offer up nothing about Knock Out’s injuries whenever Bumblebee inquired after him, and First Aid would simply shrug and try to reassure him that Knock Out was well enough to be returned to his cell, or they would not have moved him to begin with.

For the fifth time in as many cycles, Bumblebee looked to his chest plates as he placed a hand there, recalling the way the armor had started to part of its own accord when Knock Out stood at his berthside, the former ‘Con’s own plates cracking open seemingly on their own as well. Although Bumblebee had spent many hours over the past cycles trying to comprehend the significance of that instance, it was still something he could not explain. It had certainly terrified Knock Out.

And additionally, for the fifth time in as many cycles, Bumblebee again thought of Breakdown, and recalled the vision he’d had as though the incident had occurred only yesterday, and he felt a momentary pain flare up in his spark. It did not help that the setting of the vision was the very medbay Bumblebee currently lay in. He had glanced around the room until he located what he was certain was the exact spot Megatron had allowed him to sob into his servos while the Decepticon warlord promised, albeit via violent means, that everything would be alright. Bumblebee still could not shake the feelings of hope and comfort that had given him, even though the words had come from Megatron, even though Bumblebee knew that the vision made him merely a spectator to the scene he had been shown, and that the feelings were not, _could not_ truly be his own, for he would _never_ have given such weight to Megatron’s promises, well-intentioned or not.

Bumblebee lifted his hands and placed them over his optics as he felt a twinge of sadness emanate from his spark, and then he felt immediately guilty for having such an emotional reaction to something that he reasoned he really had no business being sad about to begin with, as though Breakdown’s death was not his to grieve, and to do so would be to mock it.

“I need a vacation,” Bumblebee muttered to himself, his palms still over his closed optics. “We _all_ need a vacation.”

“WE DID IT!”

Bumblebee quickly pulled his hands from his face, blinking to the entry as Smokescreen came running down the ramp. He started to cringe as the fast-moving blur of blue and yellow bot barreled towards him with no sign of stopping, the same way he had seen dogs get happy around their humans and practically bowl them over in their excitement. Except in this instance it was not a dog, but a five-thousand-pound, six-and-a-half-meter-tall mech. Bumblebee braced for impact, slowly holding up a hand. “Smokescreen, don’t— Oof!”

“We FIXED the COMMS!” Smokescreen slammed to a stop beside the medlsab and gathered Bumblebee’s entire top half up in an embrace with both servos so tight that Bumblebee felt all the air being squeezed out of his vents. “We’re ready to send out the signal!”

“Dude, it hurts,” Bumblebee wheezed, unable to return the hug because Smokescreen’s grip was so tight that Bumblebee’s arms were being forced out to his sides at awkward angles.

“Oh! Sorry,” Smokescreen quickly set Bumblebee back down, though his concern over Bumblebee’s pain was short-lived. “But we DID it! They work! The comms work!”

“That’s great! That’s amazing!” Bumblebee said as he tried to smile through the wince Smokescreen’s actions were causing him to make, though he was genuinely thrilled that finally, _finally_ something was going right!

“We’re ready to send out the message!” Smokescreen could barely stand still.  “Whadda you want it to say, Bee? Waitwaitiwait!” Smokescreen open the data screen on his right arm and tapped the small monitor there, nodding to Bumblebee when he began recording for Bumblebee’s voice.

Bumblebee gave pause to this request, mulling over his options. Suddenly the weight of the situation felt heavy on his shoulders; this was one of those moments that would be written about in the historical archives. He knew he had to choose his words wisely, that they had to be believable, and neutral, so that all bots, regardless of their affiliation, would want to return.

Bumblebee thought of all the instances he had been present to hear Optimus Prime rally the Autobots with one of his legendary monologues, and at first, Bumblebee tried to craft something similar in his mind. He was not great with words himself, especially not those on-the-spot speeches that were meant to speak to bots’ sparks and instill a sense of hope and inspiration. He had spent nearly a million years without any vocalizer at all before Ratchet had finally been able to synthesize the electronic tone-to-data voice box that gave Bumblebee the ability to “verbally” communicate again. All those years in silence did not exactly make him a good motivational speaker. Hell, he wasn’t even a decent one, but in the end, he realized he didn’t have to be. Sometimes even the simplest message spoke volumes. He smiled back to Smokescreen.

“Cybertronians, come home. The war is over.”

Smokescreen smiled and nodded to that, cutting the recording off before he spoke himself. “Sounds awesome, we’ll do it! Oh! And Magnus thinks that we might have enough range to reach Earth. We can _finally_ tell the kids and Fowler we won!”

“Are you serious?” Bumblebee blinked, putting his hand back to his head. “Oh my God, the poor kids! Raf, Jack, Miko…They probably think we’re _dead_!” It wasn’t that he had forgotten about them, on the contrary he thought of them often, multiple times a cycle, but when he calculated how much time had actually gone by since the day they left Earth to destroy Unicron and reclaim Cybertron, he realized it amounted to almost two Earth months. When they’d left, it had been midsummer; Jack and Miko had just graduated high school and would soon be off to college; Raf would be entering his freshman year at Jasper High. Bumblebee knew that for humans, especially young ones, two months could seem like two years.

“It’s okay, Bee,” Smokescreen gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, “we’ll get a message back to them, don’t worry! Magnus has that one Vehicon helping him out with the comms station and yo, that mech is _really smart_!”

“I know,” Bumblebee vented a sigh, “I know you guys can do it, I’m just…I’m _really_ sorry I can’t be of much help right now. I feel like such an aft,” he shook his head at himself as he crossed his arms over his chassis and glanced elsewhere.

Smokescreen rolled his optics. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just get better, and you’ll be back to running the show in no time,” he smirked as he started to back away from the medslab, his gaze suddenly darting around for Ratchet like he just now became aware of the danger he’d put himself into by busting into the medbay without warning. “I know I shouldn’t be in here, but I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

Bumblebee glanced back to Smokescreen at that as a thought popped into his mind. “You should go down to the brig and tell Knock Out, he’s the one who told us where to find the microfilaments, after all.”

Smokescreen paused in his steps and instantly frowned. “Awww! Do I HAVE to!?”

“C’mon, Smokey. You can at least tell him ‘thank you’,” Bumblebee smiled at the look Smokescreen was giving him. He wasn’t going to force the bot to follow his orders, but he felt Knock Out should be allowed to share this milestone with them and know that he’d helped to make it possible.

Smokescreen muttered something unintelligible as he crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders, his doorwings held horizontally flat as he scowled at the floor.

“Well, if you _can’t_ tell him, will you at least tell him ‘thank you’ from _me_?” Bumblebee tried a different tactic.

“I can _tell_ him!” Smokescreen instantly drew himself up again, standing tall. “I’m not like… _afraid_ of him, or anything!”

“I never thought you were,” Bumblebee smirked as his second approach to the subject struck home.

Smokescreen suddenly ducked as the circular whirl of a wrench spinning end over end went slicing through the air mere inches from his head. It had enough force behind it that it carried all the way to the opposite end of the room and cracked against the far wall.

“OUT!” Ratchet’s voice boomed from the side office of the medbay.

Bumblebee glanced towards the office door, then back to Smokescreen as he smirked. “Better get going, then.”

 

Knock Out had been back in his cell for three cycles, and he did not mind it one bit. Sure, it was significantly smaller than the medbay, but at least it was quiet, it gave him his own space, and he was alone, most of the time. Ratchet came by twice a cycle to hand him a ration of medical-grade Energon and run the scanner over his frame, all without a word, while Knock Out accepted the ration and glared silently elsewhere. If Ratchet thought he could give Knock Out the silent treatment and win that game, he was sorely mistaken. Knock Out had once given Starscream the silent treatment for six years while living on the Nemesis, seeing him in the corridors every day, smirking in silence to the Seeker as he passed him by. It had made Starscream nuts, and Megatron had praised Knock Out for his prolonged “punishment” toward the Second in Command: “You see, Starscream? Knock Out has _dedication_ , Knock Out has _determination_. Unlike _you_!” which pissed Starscream off even more.

Upon being released inside the cell, once Ratchet had reset the glow-bars and tromped off down the hallway, Knock Out had stepped to the wall of tick-marks where he had been keeping track of the cycles he had spent with the Autobots thus far, and scratched several more slashes into the metal with his pointed index finger, so that the count matched his internal date log. Then he had stepped back to admire his work, and realized how depressing the sight of all those marks really was.

Today was no different. He added a tick mark to his growing collection on the wall, then sat on the recharge slab, his back to the glowing bars as he tried to figure out everything that he had seen and experienced in the past week. He had not allowed any of that recently-acquired data to run through his processors while Ratchet had him tied up in the medbay because he was not keen on the idea of any of the bots witnessing him get emotional over something he could not explain to them, and he knew he had already accidentally let that happen, twice, and that was embarrassing enough.

In the past two days, he had carefully broken down his memory of the vision he had experienced of Bumblebee and tried to sort the facts from the emotions, but it had been difficult. Despite his hatred of humans, the feelings of guilt running through him over harming the small child were real. He tried to convince himself that what had happened in the vision was not _his_ reality, and that everything he had witnessed did not actually happen to _him_ , but his mind and spark were telling him otherwise. He truly felt as though he had brought harm to one of his best friends, to one of his most _vulnerable_ best friends, all because he himself did not contain the inner strength to keep Megatron from controlling his form.

Knock Out had thought he and the other Decepticons had it bad because Megatron enjoyed beating the slag out of them once a while, even though Knock Out himself believed they were always deserving of it, but that was decidedly _nothing_ compared to having Megatron living _inside_ your brain node and controlling your frame as though it belonged to him.

Certainly, the imposed memories of Simanzi were horrible, and there were several of those images that he found he could not shake from his mind, but the glowing red optics and the feeling of losing complete control of himself were far more terrifying. His dreams were already haunted by those optics, but the sensation of Megatron _owning_ his frame, controlling its movements, that was a new experience, and a new addition to his almost-nightly false recall lineup. His first night back in the cell, he calculated five hours in sleeper mode before he was startled awake from the dreams. His second night in the cell, he calculated two.

Now, on this third day back in his cell, he decided that sleeper mode was for pansy-afts, and that he would be abstaining from it for as long as he could manage. It would be a good test of willpower, he decided, and clearly he needed to work on his willpower if he was unable to shake Megatron from his mind, whether that was real or perceived.

Knock Out soon found the recent memories of what had happened between him, Bumblebee, and Optimus Prime creeping into his processors, regardless of the fact that he had been doing his best to keep them hidden. He did not want to think about how he had been given a second chance, or how Optimus had told them to make him proud, or how his spark now pulsed to the same frequency as Bumblebee’s.  He should be thankful to be alive and grateful for the opportunity, he _knew_ that.

And yet, Knock Out was terrified by the fact, and he _did_ believe it was a fact and not some pain-induced delusion, that Optimus had somehow given a piece of his spark to him and Bumblebee. Knock Out had not forgotten Optimus’s final message as the Light took him and Bumblebee back to the realm of the living. It was _not_ a comfort knowing that the Prime was watching over him; the thought of it made him paranoid. What did Prime mean when said he was _always_ with him? Did he mean that in a literal sense?

Knock Out flicked his gaze upward momentarily, then slowly around the rest of the small cell. What if Prime was watching him _right now_? Knock Out winced as the stress of trying to process everything made his head ache, and he raised a hand to press his fingers and thumb along his optic ridges. Apparently, he could _never_ be alone, now. _Great._ That was just great. He began to contemplate whether or not voluntary stasis was his best and only viable option.

He did not want to power down because Megatron was waiting in his dreams to take over his body, yet he did not want to remain awake because Optimus was watching his every move, silently judging him from the afterlife. Knock Out had never gone into a voluntary stasis himself, but he was familiar with the process. It was, for all intents and purposes, a self-induced coma. Bots who had gone under and revived reported no dreams, no recollection of the passage of time, nothing. It was like deactivating without the actual death part. Sure, there were side effects upon reawakening, achy joints, minor memory loss, but those were temporary disorders and only became a serious problem for bots who stayed under for hundreds or thousands of years. _Maybe just a few years_ , Knock Out told himself. _Maybe just ten or twenty or a hundred_. _The Autobots wouldn’t mind._ Hell, they would probably be thankful, he’d be doing them a favor as much as himself.

Knock Out quickly lifted his head, his thoughts suddenly interrupted by the sound of metal footfalls coming down the long hallway outside his cell. The steps were interspersed with the tell-tale sounds of a transformation, followed by the revving of engines and screeching of tires as the vehicle raced down the corridor, then another transformation and more footsteps. The bot cycled through this series three times in a row, just to get down the hallway.

Knock Out narrowed his optics, not moving from his seat on the slab, his back still to the bars as he tried to figure out who was coming to disturb him. It wasn’t First Aid, the footfalls were too heavy. It wasn’t Ratchet, the old mech didn’t have that kind of energy. It wasn’t Bumblebee because, well…it couldn’t be. The floor wasn’t shaking so it wasn’t Bulkhead, and yet the steps weren’t light enough to be Arcee. Ultra Magnus wouldn’t transform without a good reason to, Knock Out was certain the mech was _that_ stuck up. And it couldn’t be Wheeljack, because while Wheeljack might enjoy seeing Knock Out behind bars, Knock Out knew the others would never allow him to come down here alone. At least he _hoped_ they wouldn’t. That meant there was only one bot left…

Knock Out heard the footsteps come to a stop right outside his cell and he sighed, rolling his optics so dramatically that he tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. “What do you _want_ , Smokescreen?”

“How’d you know it was me?” Smokescreen blinked through the glowing bars, unsure of whether to be impressed or scared that Knock Out was able to identify him without turning around.

“No other ‘Bot would transform three times while walking down a hallway just because they can.”

“Oh,” if bots could blush from embarrassment, Smokescreen would have. He did not think Knock Out would have heard him, let alone cared. He quickly glanced to the floor between his peds, lacing his fingers together behind his back as he tried to remember the words he was supposed to say. “Uhh…we got the comms working again….Bumblebee wanted me to tell you thanks for the microfilaments.” Smokescreen dared to look up when he finished, his brow ridges raised to Knock Out, who had gone silent for what Smokescreen now deemed an uncomfortable amount of time.

“…Tell him ‘You’re welcome’,” Knock Out finally spoke up, though he did not turn around.

Smokescreen nodded to that, forgetting that Knock Out could not see it. He unlaced his fingers and turned to step away, then paused, frowning slightly as the conversation he’d just had with Bumblebee replayed in his mind. He glanced back to Knock Out to say one more thing. “I wanna thank you, too.”

That actually caused Knock Out to move, just a bit. Smokescreen caught the glint of one red optic glowing over the metal patches where Knock Out’s left shoulder used to be as he peered back at him.

“…..You’re also welcome.”

“Are you umm…are you doing…okay?” Smokescreen said, trying his best to make polite conversation. See!? He wasn’t afraid of an ex-‘Con!

Knock Out had to give the stupid kid props for trying, it was more effort than most bots around here had made. He turned his gaze back to the wall opposite the bars, so that Smokescreen could no longer see his optic as he smirked. “Never better.”

“Alright,” Smokescreen stepped back from the bars, nervous again as he was unsure of how to end the conversation. “…Bye,” he said, and then quickly transformed, speeding back down the hallway before Knock Out could respond.

The smirk disappeared from Knock Out’s faceplates the second Smokescreen was gone, as though he’d only put it on for show. He silently refused to acknowledge the little flicker of joy trying to rise up in his spark in response to being thanked for something, telling himself not to be so pathetic as he successfully steered his mind in another direction. It had been an easy thing to tell the ‘Bots the location of the microfilaments, and although the outcome had not been the best it could have been, the end results had gotten them one step closer to their goal. Knock Out had been happy to come back to the cell so that he could ignore them all, since they were so averse to his help, but now another thought was crossing his processors. Voluntary stasis could wait. They might not want his help, but Primus dammit, the stupid Autobots clearly _needed_ his help. They just didn’t want to admit it. Well then, he would have to make himself useful, one way or another. It was a good thing he had nothing to lose.

 

Another cycle came and went, another hashmark added to the wall. True to his word with himself, Knock Out remained powered on throughout the evening hours, silently searching his databanks for any information he felt the Autobots might be able to use to their advantage. He already had an extensive list growing on the right side of his internal readout as he added the names and locations of specific weapons cachets, ammunition points, and secret compartments scattered around every deck of the Nemesis, many with contents that he could no longer accurately recall, but it was something. At least he would be able to offer them _something_. No one could deny that he hadn’t at least _tried_ to help.

Knock Out’s self-imposed project had easily kept his systems engaged enough so that he was largely unaware of the sleepless hours ticking by, so that when his audials tuned in to the sound of footsteps in the hallway, he was genuinely startled to check his chronometer and realize morning had dawned three hours ago. He shifted the list off to the side of his HUD and perked his audials, listening.

It was definitely Ratchet heading his way, Knock Out could tell by the pace and the way the footsteps occasionally shuffled. He had heard those footsteps more than any others since this cell had become his new home, so he recognized them instantly.

Knock Out turned in his seat on the slab, glancing towards the hallway as Ratchet appeared. Normally the old Medic would open the small panel in the wall, slide the bottle of medical-grade Energon through the space between the hallway and cell, reseal the panel before taking his scan of Knock Out through one of the spaces between the glow-bars and then turn and walk away, all without a word. Not today, though.

Today, Ratchet tapped his fingers onto the button panel at the side of the cell and the laser bars disappeared with a sizzle. Once the cell was open, he stepped inside, offering a small container to Knock Out.

“Drink this,” Ratchet said, his blue optics narrowed slightly.

Knock Out was inwardly beaming because Ratchet, having spoken first between them since they had been giving each other the silent treatment, just lost the game. _Sucker. I win!_ Knock Out did not like the look of the contents of the container he was being handed, however. He slowly stood from the slab as he turned to face the other bot, making sure to keep the berth between them as he took the cup from Ratchet with his pointy fingers. “What is it?” He eyed the grey liquid warily.

“Earth minerals.”

“Eww!” Knock Out immediately held the container away from himself as though it was toxic and gave Ratchet a look that suggested the old mech was crazy. “No! _Why_!?”

“Because the metal alloys that occur naturally on that planet are good for you!” Ratchet rolled his optics at Knock Out’s reaction. “Primus, didn’t you _know_ that? Didn’t you administer dietary supplements to the Deceptions?”

Knock Out blinked to that. “No, I...I didn’t know these existed,” he peered down into the container as he brought it close again. “Not for _our_ consumption, anyway.”

“Drink it. Now.”

“Fine,” Knock Out said with a huff as he gave the cup’s contents a final glare before he tossed them back like a shot. He swallowed hard, then made a face as though he’d been given poison. “Why does it taste like _dirt!?”_ One might ask why any bot knew what dirt tasted like, however Knock Out had lived on Earth long enough, driven through enough grassy fields, along enough winding dirt roads, and fought enough battles in the middle of nowhere that he was quite familiar with what dirt tasted like.

“I told you, it’s from Earth,” Ratchet shook his head as he took the container from Knock Out with one hand and offered the usual open bottle of Energon with the other. “Here, wash it down with this.”

Knock Out happily accepted the bottle and immediately chugged a third of its contents in an effort to remove the taste of grit from his glossa. He swore he could feel little granules between his denta plates. _Disgusting._ “Ugh,” he shuddered at the after-taste. “I’m _not_ taking that again!”

“Actually, I’ve decided you’ll be taking it every other cycle, so get used to it,” Ratchet launched right into his next sentence before Knock Out could protest. “The Vehicons keep asking about you.”

That threw Knock Out off the beginnings of his anti-Earth-mineral rant immediately. “ _Vehicons_?” he eyed Ratchet suspiciously. “ _What_ Vehicons?”

“The Vehicons that you were captured with two stellar-cycles ago. The Vehicons that you shared a holding bay with on this ship for cycles while the rest of us were gearing up for the final battle against Unicron,” said Ratchet, giving Knock Out a pointed look, as though he expected the mech to remember.

“They’re still _alive_?” Knock Out blinked. “How did they…,” and then he glared once the realization hit him. “Wait a minute, why aren’t _they_ locked up down here too!?”

“Because they were Megatron’s cannon-fodder _slave_ caste and they did _nothing_ wrong. They held no rank, gave no orders, and were forced to obey Megatron’s every command whether they wanted to or not, because that’s what they were sparked for,” Ratchet returned Knock Out’s glare, though he was deliberately keeping his anger in check this time, barely. “And they’ve given _quite_ the insight regarding you and the medbay and how you liked to run things around here while under Megatron’s rule.”

Knock Out paused in taking another swig from the bottle, his optics going wide for a moment before he narrowed his gaze elsewhere, a finger tapping against his chin as he thought about the many, _many_ things the Vehicons might have divulged to the Autobots. “ _Have_ they.”

“Yes, they have,” Ratchet could not help the smirk that crossed his features as he watched Knock Out begin to worry. “They want to see you.”

“Why?” Knock Out said, shooting his glare back to Ratchet.

“They’re concerned for your wellbeing.”

“Hah!” Knock Out laughed. “And here I thought we were on a truth-telling streak with one another. I guess you lose _that_ round.”

“I’m not lying. They seem to genuinely care,” Ratchet said, though he paused at his last words “…most of them, anyway.”

“Sure, they care to see me behind _bars_ after all this time, like the _rest_ of you,” Knock Out snapped back at him.

“I’ll have them come by after working hours this evening,” said Ratchet, still smirking as he stepped backwards out into the hallway and reconfigured the laser bars back into place between them.

“ _Don’t!”_ Knock Out stepped around the recharge slab to stand directly beside the bars in order to see Ratchet as he started down the hallway. “ _I_ don’t want to see _them!_ ”

“I’m not giving you a choice!”

Knock Out scowled after Ratchet, watching his frame get smaller and smaller down the long corridor before he disappeared into the lift at the end of it. Slumping back down to sit on the recharge slab, Knock Out considered how much harm the Vehicons’ confessions might cause to his trustworthiness amongst the Autobots. A _lot_ , the answer to that question was: _A lot_.

He had assumed the Vehicons were all dead, that none of them had survived the final battle. He certainly had not seen any survivors present the night Prime sacrificed himself to the Well. Perhaps they’d all been hiding in the ship the entire time, that would have been the _smart_ thing to do.

Knock Out suddenly realized how much easier it had been for him when he assumed he was the only Decepticon to defect. In the beginning, it had been a lonely venture, but now that he knew there were still Vehicons lurking around, Vehicons working alongside the Autobots more than _he_ was, gaining their trust more than _he_ was, spreading rumors and gossip and, Primus forbid, _the actual truth_ about him and the other Decepticons on the ship, _now_ things were difficult. Now it would be their word against his, and there were apparently several of them. They would band together, they always did. Knock Out couldn’t blame them for that, they only had each other, after all, but he was certain they would throw him under the bus, that they had probably done so already; Knock Out saw the way Ratchet smirked at his uneasiness the moment Vehicons were mentioned.

Setting the bottle of Energon aside, Knock Out clamped his hand over his shuttered optics and tried to think of the worst thing he had ever done to a Vehicon, well, the worst thing he had ever done to a Vehicon that the surviving few _knew_ about. That was the problem with Vehicons: They all _looked_ the same, they all _sounded_ the same, and as far as Knock Out could tell, they all had the same personality. If he had caused any harm to any of those Vehicons still alive today, he would have no way of knowing what he had done and to which, because in his mind, they were _literally_ all the same.

He had definitely treated some Vehicons like slag. He had definitely taken his anger out on more than one of them on many occasions, he had definitely killed many of them when their injuries were non-life-threatening because he needed their parts to save the twenty other Vehicons in his medbay that _would_ have died if they did not get the parts they needed. Did that make Knock Out a bad Medic? Maybe, but to the twenty Vehicons he saved that day, and all the days thereafter, he was their fragging hero.

But that wasn’t even the half of it.

Megatron had stationed Vehicons on every part of the ship, as well as within the Energon mines on Earth; the Vehicons were _everywhere, all the time_ : On the bridge, in the corridors, at the comm station, in the shuttle bays, in the engine room, guarding things, cleaning things, repairing things. Bots had called Soundwave “The eyes and ears of the Decepticons”, but in truth it was the Vehicons who heard and saw all that happened, who stood silently by and witnessed Megatron’s victories as well as his failures, and all the events in between. They knew everything. Primus dammit, they knew _everything_.

Knock Out focused on the little internal icon at the right of his HUD, the one that flashed “CONTINUE?”, his system’s way of reminding him about the list he had been making of all the secret stashes and hidden compartments on the Nemesis, and locations on Cybertron that he had planned to share with the Autobots. Knock Out closed down the list, saving it to his memory for another time. He had intended to reveal what he knew to Ratchet, but now, with the threat of the Vehicons’ words against his, he decided he would wait to see what they had to say to him, first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	16. A Second Chance

Somewhere between saving his list and trying to recall the serial number of every Vehicon that had ever crossed one of his medslabs, Knock Out slipped into sleeper mode. He had not intended to power down in the middle of the cycle, but scanning through thousands of images of six-digit serial numbers from the past million years was the Transformer equivalent of counting sheep, and his sensors offlined before his helm even hit the recharge slab. So much for working on his willpower.

The nightmare was new. This time it was not Megatron’s crimson gaze burning through the darkness, but the red, V-shaped glow of a Vehicon’s optical visor. That in itself was not something to be afraid of, but suddenly another appeared beside it, then another, and another, until as far as Knock Out could see, thousands of visors were glaring back at him in the same way that humans depicted evil things peering out of the shadows in horror movies.

And then they started to march. Each visor inched closer and closer as the sound of a thousand footsteps moved steadily as one, the ground shaking from their numbers as they advanced on Knock Out’s position, and he could feel all of their collective EM fields pulsing toward him, pushing all their hate and anger onto him all at once, and he knew they were out for Energon.

Knock Out’s first inclination was to run, as was generally the case, but when he turned around, he was met with another thousand red visors; they had him surrounded. _Fine_. It was spilled Energon they were after? _Fine_. He would _give_ them spilled Energon. Knock Out took up a fighting stance, tucking his elbow joints in as he activated his drill and buzz saw…and nothing happened.

Now panicking at his lack of weaponry, Knock Out quickly looked from his faulty servos to the surrounding glow of angry visors only to realize they were already on top of him. He felt the crushing weight of thousands of Vehicons with thousands of rage-filled signatures trampling over him, squeezing his spark right out of his chassis and –.

Knock Out bolted upright on the recharge slab, his optics wide with fear as he was jolted back online by the sound of his own yelling voice. He blinked at the wall across from him, venting sharply as he tried to regain his composure, only to be startled again as the sound of metal scraping on metal instantly drew his attention toward the laser bars. Without a second thought and his mind still in a panic, he activated the release mechanism of his circular saw, only to be met with the hollow *click!* sound inside his servo as the latch failed to fire, thanks to the I/D Chip. In that same instant, his optics were able to focus beyond the glow-bars and into to the hallway to finally notice seven terrified Vehicons pressing themselves up against the far wall, as though the bars separating them were not enough to ensure their safety from the mech on the other side.

One Vehicon turned its head to look down the hallway, then another and another and another, as though they were all contemplating fleeing the scene, but one of them, a flyer at the front of the group, did not turn its head, but instead dared to inch closer to the bars. Slowly, the other six looked back and followed suit.

Knock Out watched them advance, the same way he had just watched them in his dream, though this he knew to be reality, and he was silently thankful for the bars that separated them, probably more than the Vehicons were.

The flyer Vehicon in front of the group stopped well out of arm’s length from the bars, his head canting slightly to one side as he watched his CMO tremble with fear, which made no sense to the Vehicon whatsoever. No one was afraid of their kind, least of all Decepticon Command. The Autobots must have really fragged him up.

“We …w-we just wanted to see how you were doing, Sir,” the flyer said, confusion written all over his faceplate, which although simple in its design, could vaguely express emotion, if one was good at reading that sort of thing.

Knock Out flicked his optics back and forth to the seven sets of visors and faceplates that all looked identical as he tried to calm his circuits. He slowly shifted his peds to the floor so that he sat facing them, and noticed that all but the Vehicon standing in the front took a cautious step backward in the hallway at his movements. “I’m fine,” Knock Out focused his gaze back on the one that was brave enough to speak. “Everything’s fine.”

“You don’t _look_ fine,” as though the ice was suddenly broken, another Vehicon, a grounder, moved to stand beside the flyer at the front, eyeing Knock Out up and down. A third Vehicon came to stand beside the second and elbowed it sharply in the side, causing it to exclaim, “Ow! What, it’s true! He looks worse than when Bumblebee threw that train car at him!”

“I’m sorry, Sir! He doesn’t mean that,” the first Vehicon spoke again before glaring its visor to the grounder, “ _do you_ , Caps Lock?”

Knock Out raised both brows now as he watched the Vehicons banter back and forth. He had never heard them speak to each other like this, ever. And since when did they have _names_?

“What he _means_ ,” the third Vehicon piped up, “is that he’s concerned for your health, Sir!”

“Exactly, Sir,” the first Vehicon in the front nodded.

“Uh-huh,” Knock Out said, still unsure of what he was seeing. These were not the Vehicons he was used to. They were so…talkative, and animated, as though they were actual bots and not mindless drones. “What do the Autobots have you lot doing for them now?” he asked.

The first Vehicon raised a hand, pointing with a slender finger to himself, then to the third Vehicon to have spoken, and then to the other that stood behind him. “Myself and Task Manager and Spacebar are helping Bulkhead fix up one of the old habitation blocks, so when bots start coming back to the planet, they’ll have a place to stay.”

“ _I_ help Ultra Magnus keep the comm station running,” said Caps Lock with a slight air of importance.

“And Spam and Click Bait and I patrol with Arcee and Smokescreen,” came the voice of another Vehicon standing behind Task Manager.

“I _was_ helping Wheeljack fix the Bridge portal,” yet another Vehicon, another flyer, stepped up to the front row, looking to Knock Out, “but he doesn’t like help. From anyone. And…he hasn’t been around much,” the Vehicon seemed to sulk a little at that.

“And the Autobots,” Knock Out said, looking from one face to the next, “they gave you all the full Designations you’re calling each other?”

“Oh! No, well,” the first Vehicon spoke again, “…kind of? I mean, when we told them our serial numbers, they suggested we pick real Designations, so we did.”

Knock Out was still blinking to at the group, slightly dumbfounded at their apparent complete turnaround in demeanors and attitudes and personalities. “And what did _you_ pick?”

“Steve,” said the first Vehicon.

“‘ _Steve_ ’?” Knock Out repeated, unsure if he’d heard the name correctly.

“Yes,” Steve replied, looking suddenly embarrassed as he quickly glanced to the floor. “…yes, Sir.”

Knock Out smirked ever-so-slightly then, the residual fear from his false recall swept away in an instant. “I see,” he eyed the group as a whole once more. “And are they treating you well?”

“Oh, yeah!” said Click Bait, “They’re all _super_ nice!”

“They’re _great_ , actually!” said Spam.

“Yeah, _way_ better than how Megatron or anyone else ever treated us!” Task Manager declared, then quickly held up a hand in defense. “I…I mean, except you, Sir!”

Knock Out finally rolled his optics before running his hand down his faceplates. He knew he had to put a stop to one thing, immediately, lest the Autobots get the wrong impression. “Alright, listen: You need to stop calling me ‘Sir’. I’m not a Commanding Officer anymore. The Autobots are your Masters now, and—”  

“Our _friends_!” Caps Lock actually yelled, and Knock Out blinked in surprise as the Vehicon stalked right up to the bars with apparent newfound courage as he glared down to Knock Out. “The Autobots are our _friends_! Bumblebee said so! They _all_ said so!”

“They said we don’t have a Master anymore, that we’re all equals!” came the voice of another Vehicon in the back of the group.

“Yeah!” suddenly all the Vehicons were yelling in agreement and nodding their heads as they shared Caps Lock’s sentiment.

Knock Out felt it, their collective EM field, just like in his dream, only it was not filled with anger and hatred, but with unity and power and excitement, as though the little group of Vehicons had just come to realize their newfound freedom and all that it entailed. “That’s good,” Knock Out nodded slowly, watching them all carefully now and keeping his own EM field close. “That’s good for you all.”

The Vehicons continued to nod amongst one another, but Steve stepped up close to bars now as well. “When will they let you out of here, Si—” he started to say, then finished slowly, as though to say the name out loud was difficult for him, “…. _Knock Out_?”

His optics flicking over Steve’s frame, Knock Out tried to catch a glimpse of Steve’s serial number, but he could not. He was uncertain why Steve was showing any concern for him at all, and he could not discern the bot from any of the others, so there was no telling why Steve gave a damn. “I’m not entirely sure,” Knock Our replied.

“They asked us things,” Spam stepped up to the bars next, so that now the entire cell front was lined with Vehicons, and those that were not at the bars were peeking between the others’ shoulder plates to stare at their former CMO. Spam eyed Knock Out for a moment before quickly looking elsewhere, nervously tapping his fingers together as he spoke, his words tumbling out fast and revealing his anxiety. “The Autobots asked us things about the Decepticons and the ship and Megatron and Starscream and everyone else and,” Spam looked back to Knock Out and dared to hold his gaze, “…and _you_.”

Knock Out had been waiting for this. He was hoping he would not have to try and trick the Vehicons out of revealing what they had said, but it appeared they were giving him an opening. He pushed the anger already welling up inside of him aside for the moment. If they were willing to talk, yelling at them would only make them shut down, he knew that. He tried to make his voice sound as calm and even as possible when he spoke, though his too-emotionless faceplates and slightly raised tone may have given away his true feelings.

“And what did you tell them?”

“We told them the _truth_ ,” Caps Lock said, still glaring to Knock Out, his singular EM field pulsing fury through the glow-bars like a sharp spear, “about _everything_! _All_ of us.” He looked Knock Out dead in the optics, as though challenging him to do or say something about it.

Knock Out held the Vehicon’s gaze, his brows narrowing as his anger instantly reappeared. The remaining armor plates on his frame slowly bristled upwards, much like an Earthen feline would do to make itself look fierce to an adversary. All of the Vehicons recognized this look of intimidation from Knock Out and instantly moved away from the bars, all of them except Caps Lock.

The two bots glared at one another, creating an EM field so thick with tension and hostility it could have been cut with a laser scalpel. Caps Lock stood firm, his red V-shaped visor easily conveying his rage. Knock Out was two nano-klicks away from deciding whether or not he should lunge at the bars and reach for Caps Lock’s throat, or if a mere verbal threat of violent retaliation would be enough to quell the emboldened Vehicon, when a sudden realization occurred to him: _Prime_. Optimus Prime was watching him, now and always.

In the moment that paranoid thought crossed through Knock Out’s processor, another quickly followed after it, which was that this “battle” was over, and he’d lost. Knock Out suddenly recalibrated his optics and realized that Caps Lock and all the other Vehicons standing in that hallway were in the same boat as Knock Out himself. They had everything to gain and nothing to lose by telling the Autobots the truth, but the Vehicons had given in to the Autobots first, they had spoken up first, revealed all of their knowledge about the ship and Decepticon Command and Megatron first, while Knock Out had offered nothing but access to the Decepticon CMRD and a few rolls of nanowave microfilaments. And it hadn’t been enough, Knock Out knew right then and there that he hadn’t given them enough information, and now he looked as guilty and untrustworthy as he was certain the Autobots perceived him to be.

Knock Out broke eye-contact with Caps Lock, his gaze shifting to the floor. His armor plating clattered back into place as he raised his hand to cover his optics; he did not see the nod that Caps Lock gave him in recognition of his accepting defeat before stepping away from the bars.

Steve ventured back to the cell to take Caps Lock’s place, his vocalizer barely registering as he spoke softly, “We didn’t do it to make you angry.”

“I’m not angry,” said Knock Out, though it took him several seconds before he could say the words and mean it.

“ _Really?”_ Steve did not sound convinced.

“Really. They saved your planet and…freed you from oppression,” Knock Out let his hand fall from his face as he set his elbow joint on his knee, though he did not look at the Vehicons again. “They are owed the truth.”

“We should go,” Click Bait tapped Steve on the servo with a finger as he spoke, “They’ll be breaking out the rations soon.” The others nodded to that and started off down the hallway, all of them naturally falling into a marching step behind one another.

Steve moved slower than the rest, giving a final glance to his former CMO as he trailed behind the others. “I’m glad you’re doing fine, Knock Out.”

Ratchet, who had been standing silently by in the open cell next door to Knock Out’s, gave the Vehicons a small smile as a few nodded to him in return, though he was unable to catch the gaze of Caps Lock, whose EM field left trace amounts of anger in his wake.

Ratchet waited until the Vehicons had disappeared into the lift before he moved from his spot in the empty cell and deactivated the bars to Knock Out’s via the wall panel. “See now? They _do_ care,” he said as the bars disappeared and Knock Out blinked up to him with surprise. “Except for Caps Lock, he clearly hates you. What did you do to him?”

“Oh, you’re _eavesdropping_ now?” Knock Out scowled up at him, though the realization that Ratchet had witnessed that entire conversation quickly turned his anger to utter embarrassment.

“They asked me to stay nearby in case you got mad at them. Apparently, that happened a lot. What did you do to Caps Lock?”

“I have no idea. They all look the same, so…” Knock Out shrugged his shoulder, eyeing his peds.

“So,” Ratchet stepped into the cell to set a fresh bottle of Energon on the recharge slab beside Knock Out, who leaned away from his outstretched servo, “what you _really_ mean is that at some point in time, or perhaps _many_ points in time the way they tell it, you harmed a Vehicon or two, or twenty, or _hundreds_ , and you can’t remember what you did to which because to you, they all look the same.”

“I never—” Knock Out began, his optics narrowing first at Ratchet’s accusation, then at himself as he had to pause, because it was his immediate response to deny everything that Ratchet had said, but that would not be truth. He opted instead to simply not admit it outright.  “Listen,” he started again, “I did what I had to do to save their stupid afts from deactivating. They don’t have any idea what keeps them ticking on the inside! They don’t understand how medical procedures work!”

“And _you_ do?” Ratchet stepped back out of the cell, crossing his servos over his chest.

“ _Yes!_ I went to the IMA! And yes, I _know_ ,” Knock Out raised his hand in defense before Ratchet could get a word in regarding his statement, “I _know_ I don’t have the stupid degree, but I still learned the trade! I’m still a competent doctor!”

“I know what caste the Functionists put you into when you were sparked, Knock Out, and it wasn’t Medical Sciences,” Ratchet said, raising a brow.

“Don’t lie to me,” said Knock Out, his anger came back full-force. “I haven’t been lying to you.”

Ratchet merely shrugged. “I finally had a moment to review your medical history. I know what you were and I know where you were,” he paused, trying to think of a suitable term, “…stationed.”

Knock Out scoffed, waving Ratchet away with his hand before he leaned over and grabbed the bottle of Energon beside him. “Oh, _really?_ You think you gathered _all_ that from my medical records?”

“Yes. Between your immunizations and the sodium silicate exposure on that particular date in history, the _same date_ as the failed assassination attempt of the _entire_ Senate? _Yes_ , I was able to put it all together,” Ratchet shrugged again. “ _I know_ , Knock Out.”

Knock Out continued to scowl at Ratchet for a moment longer before he turned his glare to the bottle in his hand. Ratchet was not a stupid bot, Knock Out would give him that. As it had always been, Knock Out could not decide whether he ought to be wholly embarrassed or defensively proud of his past, and that was made obvious by his lack of a lengthy response.

“Oh.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Ratchet said, noting Knock Out’s demeanor, but he was not going to end the conversation because of it. It was time for some real answers. “Honestly, I’m surprised they even _let_ you into the IMA.”

“I passed those entrance exams with flying colors!” Knock Out said as he looked to Ratchet once more.

“That’s _not_ what I mean. You know it was damn near impossible for bots to cross-train into other functions back then, especially a bot from one of the lower castes, like you. Are you telling me you took your exam results to the IMA and they just _let_ you enroll? That’s _unheard_ of.”

“I had to make a few backroom deals to get through the front door,” Knock Out quickly found his cool again, reaffixing his signature smirk as he eyed Ratchet over the Energon bottle as he took a swig.

Ratchet’s face went slack as he watched Knock Out’s demeanor change instantly. “You didn’t.”

“I _did!”_ Knock Out perked his brows once, still grinning as he lowered the bottle.

“Primus,” Ratchet muttered, rubbing his fingers along his brow as he sighed.

“Oh please,” Knock Out rolled his optics; his smirk disappeared and was replaced with a glare.  “If you know what I was, and you know where I came from, then you _know_ what my options were, and I was _not_ going to live the rest of my life like that. _No_ fragging way. Not after the Senators kicked us all out, even after most of us _died in their place_!”

“I’m not opposing your methods to getting accepted at the IMA, I’m opposing the fact that you had to resort to your….your _methods_ at all!” Ratchet gestured to him with a hand. “You passed the entrance exams! They should have just let you in!”

That threw Knock Out for a complete loop. He had only ever heard such words from Breakdown, and thus had never expected to hear them again, least of all from an _actual_ Medic, least of all from _Ratchet_. He was fully expecting this to be some sort of set up, but he could not help take the bait that Ratchet was offering, that he was actually on _his side_ , for once. “You really think so?”

“Of course!” Ratchet threw his hands up. “There you were, living proof that the caste system is meaningless! You passed the exams, yet they still made you jump through hoops to enter the classroom. _Unethical_ hoops!”

Ah- _hah_ , there it was, the trap was sprung. Knock Out glared again. “There’s nothing ‘unethical’ about my previous line of work.”

“I’m not calling your _caste_ unethical! I’m saying that given the circumstances…,” Ratchet rolled his optics, not wanting to offend Knock Out (Ratchet himself could not believe he was trying so hard to remain courteous) yet still attempting to keep the conversation going in a direction that would give him more information. “I assume it was the Dean of Admissions, correct? No one else had the authority to write the acceptance letters. What year did you start? I’ll bet my memory banks could dredge up his name…,” Ratchet rubbed at his chin with a hand as he thought.

“It was Bevel,” Knock Out muttered, though he shrugged indifferently just the same.

“Bevel!” now Ratchet scowled as the image of the named mech came to mind.  “I never liked that pinhead. And I’d wager it was his idea, wasn’t it?” he raised a brow to Knock Out. “Let me guess, he wasn’t going to let you in, and then he brought you into his office one cycle for a little quid pro quo.”

“You knew him pretty well, I see,” Knock Out smirked again before sipping from the bottle once more.

“We never saw optic to optic, on anything,” Ratchet eyed Knock Out and despite his reservations, could not help but offer up an apology. “I’m sorry he put you through that.”

“Psh, _I’m_ not,” Knock Out said, watching his peds again, “it got me into the academy,” though he scowled into the Energon bottle, regardless of his words. He was furious that Ratchet now had this knowledge about him and that he was at the Autobot’s mercy in yet another fashion, because apparently being their prisoner was not enough. Between the fragging Vehicons and this conversation, Knock Out realized that yes, he should have gone with voluntary stasis the second he’d thought of it. It felt like the entire planet was out to remind him of all his misgivings.

Ratchet vented a sigh as he spoke, “Knock Out, you know what we speak of here will stay between us, I won’t tell anyone. You have to start trusting me.”

“Trust is a two-way street,” Knock Out said, narrowing his optics to Ratchet once more.

“Yes, I know, I’m _trying_ ,” Ratchet returned the glare, angered because Knock Out did not immediately believe him.

“Well, _so_ am I!”

“Then I guess we both need to try harder!”

Knock Out glanced away, silently grinding his denta plates back and forth in frustration. He wanted to reenact the silent treatment policy they’d had going between them, but he knew he was too deep into the cyberweeds now that the Vehicons had mentioned Primus-knows-what.  He had to turn this back around, somehow. “Alright,” he finally conceded as he set the Energon bottle down beside him. “Alright, I will if _you_ will.”

“Deal,” Ratchet shrugged, as though that was all he’d been waiting for.

“Then let me help you!” Knock Out looked back up to Ratchet.  “How the hell am I supposed to gain your trust and ‘prove myself’ to you lot if you don’t give me a chance?”

Ratchet raised a brow to that. “After what happened on the Skybridge? How many chances do you think you deserve, Knock Out?”

Knock Out could not believe he was still being blamed for Bumblebee’s misfortune. He drew in a sharp intake, about to give Ratchet the same list of perfectly valid excuses he had given before as to exactly how he was _not_ responsible, but he managed to hold himself back, shaking his head as he eyed the wall. If he was going to attempt to offering up anything, it might as well be now. “You Autobots…you really don’t know how to utilize all of your assets, do you?”

“‘Assets’?” Ratchet repeated.

“Yes. _Me_ ,” Knock Out looked back to Ratchet, tapping the tip of a pointed finger against his own chassis. “I’m the best asset you have right now. Here you are, barely scraping by trying to get this planet up and running again with a ship that’s less and less operational by the cycle, or haven’t you noticed the lights starting to flicker? I’ve lived here on and off for as long as this ship has been space-worthy. I know its decks like the back of my servo. I know things the Vehicons don’t!” he was careful to add.

Ratchet still stood with his servos crossed. “I’m listening.”

“I know where emergency ammo and weapons are located,” Knock Out continued, “I know where the hidden Energon reserves are kept. I have a vague idea of how the engines run. _Vague_ , mind you, but an engine is an engine, just like the ones inside of us. I know which deck Shockwave stores all of his secret lab experiments,” here he gave Ratchet a pointed look, and he was pleased to catch a hint of interest flicker in Ratchet’s optics at that.  “I know where Megatron kept his stash of Dark Energon, and no, it’s _not_ in supply bay four with all the rest of the Energon crates. I know all those things about this ship and _more_.”

“And you didn’t feel like sharing this information with us earlier, why?” Ratchet said, raising a brow.

“You never asked! All you had me doing was unlocking cabinets and closets!”

“You could have offered all of that up of your own free volition, you know. We are all on the same _side_ now, aren’t we?”

Knock Out bit his glossa for a moment, literally biting back the urge to ask why, if they were on the same side, was he being held in a jail cell? He sighed again, narrowing his optics. “Yes, we are.”

Ratchet returned the glare, though his interest was piqued regarding Shockwave’s experiments. “What else?”

“I know things about this planet you probably don’t. Do you know how many times I flew back here? Do you know how familiar I am with the territories? Shockwave’s laboratories have more than just microfilaments hidden in them.”

“Oh, you’re familiar with what’s left of the city-states? Flew back here a lot, you say? Why? To scavenge for body parts?” Ratchet threw that out there just to see how truthful Knock Out was actually feeling at the moment.

Knock Out rolled his optics as he replied and wondered why the Autobots always got so hung up on this particular topic. “YES! I _scavenged_ for body parts, alright!? You _know_ I did, you saw me take them all out of the medbay last stellar-cycle! For frag’s sake, when First Aid ran into me all those mega-cycles ago it was here on Cybertron while I was scavenging for body parts! Didn’t he tell you that?”

“Of course he did,” said Ratchet, inwardly surprised at Knock Out’s blatant admission to it all. “You know it’s funny, I don’t remember _‘Corpse Desecration’_ being taught at the IMA, at _any_ medical school, actually.”

“Yes, _funny,_ ” Knock Out growled, “ _I_ don’t remember being taught how to maintain an army of a thousand Vehicons plus Commanding Officers during a four-million-year-long war resulting in a _severe_ parts shortage.”

“Did you ever kill bots for their parts?” said Ratchet, recalling his earlier discussions with the Vehicons and bringing them full-circle, now that he had Knock Out in front of him. Again, he already knew the answer, but he was testing Knock Out now. “Because that’s the rumor, you know. That’s been the rumor for centuries. ‘Knock Out, the Bloody Butcher’, that’s how you _got_ that moniker. Is it true?”

“I didn’t _kill_ them I just…There’s no sense in saving a nearly dead bot when five others could benefit from his parts if he deactivated! They were already _close_ to dying when I flipped their switches!”

“So, you _did_ kill them,” Ratchet glared. “Imagine for a moment if I subscribed to that same philosophy a deca-cycle ago when you and Bumblebee were both at death’s door.” He did not mention how he had kept First Aid from Knock Out’s frame while they worked on Bumblebee the cycle they were brought in, and in truth, at the time, Ratchet had truly believed that both Medics needed to be hands-on with Bumblebee to keep him alive. Knock Out did not know that, and he never would. “I know which one of you wouldn’t be alive today, that’s for damn sure.”

“I did what I felt was necessary at the time to keep _my comrades_ up and running. It’s done. It’s over. I did it. There’s no coming back from that or fixing it. What’s done is done.”

“Which is exactly what the Council is going to say the day of your tribunal,” Ratchet reminded him. “I appreciate your truthfulness, but if you don’t show the slightest bit of remorse for your crimes—”

“ _Crimes_!?” Knock Out blinked to that, as thought they were not talking about the same thing.

“Yes, _crimes_! War crimes! You held yourself out as a Medic and you _killed_ your patients! What happened to ‘Do no harm’!?”

“ _Excuse_ me!? I’ve _personally_ seen you harm Decepticons in the past!”

“Only in self-defense!”

“Oh please! Like you never mercy-killed a ‘Bot or two.”

“No! _Never_!” Ratchet could not believe the lack of guilt he was seeing. Did he really need to spell it out for the ex-‘Con? “That’s not what Medics _do_! Killing one to save five _still_ doesn’t justify it! What you did is _wrong_! Don’t you understand that?”

Knock Out only blinked to Ratchet, clearly not comprehending his rationale. He gestured to the right with his hand, then to the left, to indicate the difference in case Ratchet required a visual. “One! Five! You wouldn’t kill _one_ bot to save _five_ others!?”

“What if that one bot was _you_?” Ratchet set his hands on his hips. “Would _you_ be willing to die so that five other bots could live?”

“Hell no!” Knock Out responded immediately.

“And did you _ask_ the bots that same question before you ‘flipped their switches’?”

“Of course not!”

“And why not?”

“Because they would have said no!”

“ _Yes_! Yes, _exactly_! _Now_ do you see why it’s wrong!?” Ratchet gestured to him with both hands, desperate to find some form of morality in the mech before him, but Knock Out only stared at him, like he was being told to solve a riddle in a language he did not speak. Ratchet sighed heavily as he brought both hands to his faceplates. “Primus, help me.”

“What, you want me to bring them all back somehow?” Knock Out shrugged, “I can’t. But listen!” he quickly tried to steer the discussion back toward his original plan. “Let me back on the bridge and I’ll mark everything I can remember about the planet on the nav station! Let me walk the decks and I’ll point out every single thing I can think of!” except his own quarters, that is. He was still unwilling to give away the location of his one private space. “I’ll open every lock and door myself, just in case they’re rigged!”

Ratchet let his hands drop back down to his sides, still baffled by the notion that Knock Out did not see his choices as unethical. Moreover, the mech notably brushed everything aside with excuses. Nothing involving him harming to others was ever his fault, according to him. Ratchet found himself wondering if this was how Megatron justified his part in causing four million years of war and suffering.

Venting heavily, Ratchet pinched the bridge of his olfactory, shuttering his optics for a moment as he realized the ridiculousness of trying to make a Decepticon see the error of their ways, as though that could be done in one discussion, if ever. He was not even sure why he was trying. Still, Knock Out was making an offer that Ratchet did not want to refuse. He supposed he could give the bot another chance to assist.

“Alright,” Ratchet relented.  “I’ll link the nav system to a data pad and you can start with marking the local areas with what you know. When I think your frame is ready for walking long distances, then you can start on the ship decks, under someone’s supervision.”

“When?” Knock Out instantly drew up straighter where he sat. “Give the data pad to me now, I can start marking everything _right now_.”

“No,” Ratchet stepped to the wall outside the cell, reprogramming the glow-bars back into place. “I’ll have the data pad ready for you tomorrow when you come up to the medbay to swap your patches, and this had _better_ be legitimate information, Knock Out,” he made a point to say, giving Knock Out a final glare before he headed down the hallway.

“It is!” Knock Out watched Ratchet leave, though he was unsure Ratchet heard him, and found himself wondering if it was in fact Prime who was the only one to hear him instead. “It is, I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	17. A Word

Bumblebee’s message that was carried out through the comm station had only been playing for thirty hours before the first shuttle descended from the heavens toward Cybertron. The alert system on the Nemesis, triggered by the shuttle’s energy spike that pierced through the atmosphere, had woken nearly every bot from sleeper mode during those early-morning hours as the small shuttle landed not five-hundred meters from their location.

The Autobots wanted to be accepting of these first brave sparks to return to the planet, they wanted to welcome them home with open servos, but they all knew the reality of situation, and that it was entirely possible that whoever was landing had ulterior motives other than coming back to rebuild and start anew.

Wheeljack, finally convinced to return to the Nemesis by Bulkhead, had taken up a sniper position several hundred meters away from the shuttle landing point, his weapon trained on the shuttle’s dock door the second it landed.

“Just say the word, Mags, and this fragger’s brain node will be splattered all over their ship,” Wheeljack said, his words travelling into Ultra Magnus’s internal comm as he smiled and aimed his rifle sights onto the dock door.

“That’s ‘Sir’ to you,” Ultra Magnus replied, a finger to the side of his helm as he spoke. He, Ratchet, First Aid and Bulkhead all stood in front of the Nemesis awaiting the shuttle’s pilot to reveal themselves. Smokescreen and Arcee were additionally stationed at opposite hidden locations several meters off, their own weapons trained on the shuttle.

The shuttle was not large, and certainly looked worse for the wear, as though few repairs had been done to it in the past four million years. Clouds of vapor poured from its landing gear as its wheels touched down onto the planet’s metallic surface, the red and blue lights at each tip of the ship’s wings casting an eerie glow under the hull as they blinked in the early-morning darkness.

Suddenly, a white spotlight clicked on from the ship, illuminating the ground below it as the dock door slowly began to open outwards and down. Through the vapor haze tinted with tones of red and blue, the silhouette of a Seeker appeared in the wide mouth of the bay door. The red, white, and blue mech slowly descended the docking ramp, a servo raised against the vapors as he narrowed his blue optics toward the small group gathered to apparently greet him.

A moment of tension hung the air between the Autobots and the newcomer, each as apprehensive and worried as the other as the two parties closed the distance between one another. First Aid was the first to act, his smile so wide that his mask retracted of its own accord. He broke free from his spot between Ratchet and Ultra Magnus, running forward to meet the mech half-way with a shout of joy and a comforting embrace. He knew who the red, white, and blue mech was in an instant, a tiny pulse in his spark told him as much.

“Pharma!”

“Stand down, everyone,” Ultra Magnus said, his finger still to the side of his helm, “it’s one of ours.”

 

Arcee tried to force the static from her receptors as she stepped from the lift at the end of the brig’s hallway. The early morning arrival of the shuttle and the mental alertness and rush of catalycin brought about by the possibility of an enemy on board had taken hours to leave her system, and once she had returned to her quarters, she found it impossible to power down.

She had spent the entirety of dawn staring at the ceiling of her habsuite from her recharge slab, pondering the future of Cybertron, of living on a planet not submersed in war, and she wondered where and how she would fit into that type of world again. Not having fired a single shot from any weapon for stellar-cycles was making her begin to doubt herself, and thus her place among the Autobots.

The other Autobots on Team Prime all came from backgrounds that stemmed from their original peacetime occupations: Medics, Engineers, Scientists, Security Analysts. Now that the war was over, they could all go back to those jobs, if that was what they wanted. They could all make a living in their previous lines of work once they started restoring the cities, just like they had before the war forced them all to become combatants first, and whatever their primary functions had been, second.

Arcee frowned as she considered her options for a career in peacetime, unconsciously wringing her hands together at the thought as she walked slowly down the hallway toward the one occupied cell. Perhaps she could try out for the Elite Guard, if they ever decided to reinstate it? Her combat skills would absolutely be useful there. Maybe she could find a place for herself among whatever police force would surely grow from the city’s inhabitants, once enough bots returned to the planet?

While her future may be uncertain, Arcee was positive of one thing: She would never go back to what she had been before the war, _ever_. Not that she believed anyone would try to make her, or that her caste would ever undergo a resurgence, but what if they did? What if they did, and society would expect her to fall back into that profession, just like all the Medics and Engineers and Scientists would fall back into theirs?

_And what about **this** fragger?_ Arcee thought to herself as she neared Knock Out’s cell, her blue and pink optics narrowing at the thought of the ex-‘Con. Would _he_ go back to the old ways, to the primary function and caste he and Arcee were jointly forced into based on their CNA, once some semblance of peace was established? Arcee was fully aware that Knock Out had held no reservations about their place in society, at least back then. True, they had been low-forged and often grouped together with the servants, but working for the Senators had made them Elite Class amongst their own kind, and well-respected for their trade.

Until they were all either killed or kicked out and forgotten, that is.

Arcee tapped her delicate fingers against the wall panel beside Knock Out’s cell, removing the laser bars before she moved to stand before him. She crossed her arms, giving him the best angry scowl she could come up with as she watched him where he sat on the recharge slab.

Knock Out raised his head, flicking his gaze up and down Arcee’s frame with a scrutinizing look. “What’s wrong?” he asked, raising a brow.

Arcee blinked, taken aback at the way Knock Out was able to discern her current mood, despite her efforts to conceal from her faceplates and EM field her apprehension and concern regarding her future. She was quick to recover her glare, however. “Nothing. I’m here to take you to the medbay,” she said as she turned and started back down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

“ _Nothing?_ ” Knock Out said as he pushed himself from the slab and followed after her, quickly catching up due to his slightly longer stride. “Oh please. It doesn’t matter how many mega-cycles have passed, Arcee, I can still read you like a data pad.”

“Nothing I feel like sharing with _you_ , how about that?” Arcee glanced to Knock Out as he came up beside her.

“Oh, come on,” Knock Out rolled his optics as they reached the lift and stepped inside, “one Companion to another, you can tell _me_. _Ow_!” Knock Out yelped as Arcee suddenly had him pinned against the back wall of the lift, one of her hands gripping his right chest plate, the other transforming into an ion pulse rifle in nearly the blink of a human eye. The weapon hummed to life as it warmed up, the barrel pointed right at Knock Out’s head.

“If I catch you saying _that word_ again,” Arcee said calmly and matter-of-factly, the weapon’s electrical charge glowing brightly between the two bots, “I will _shoot_ you in the faceplates.”

“I would prefer you didn’t,” Knock Out replied, his voice just as calm and cool as Arcee’s, though he could not hide the wince of pain that crossed his faceplates as she shoved him up against the wall again for good measure.

“Don’t blow my cover, Knock Out, I’m serious,” Arcee growled, glaring up at him. He was taller than her, but only by a meter and a half, and her weapon fit under his chin perfectly. “I _will_ kill you.”

Knock Out raised his hand to try and push her readied servo aside, but she was strong, even for her size and lithe frame, and she did not budge. “Sure, just as long as you don’t blow _mine_ ,” Knock Out said. Perhaps now was not the best time for him to mention to Arcee what Ratchet had recently discovered, for Knock Out was certain that if the old Medic was able to determine caste from a bot’s medical records alone, then he had likely come to the same conclusion when reviewing Arcee’s file.

“4.3 million years and I haven’t yet,” Arcee countered as she finally pulled her arm away, shifting the weapon back into her hand. She gave his chassis a final push against the wall before stepping aside, her glowing optics glaring through the passing shadows as the lift moved through each floor.

“Well, neither have I,” Knock Out muttered, cringing at the repetitive shoving of his frame. Despite the physical contact and her threats of violence, he was not afraid of her. There were no warning signs alerting on his internal feed that she was a threat, not even with her weapon pointed at his face. Apparently 1.2 million years of trust did not work itself out one’s memory banks so easily.

“Good, let’s keep it that way then, shall we?” said Arcee with a continued glare.

“We shall.”

Arcee glowered at the passing deck levels as the lift continued to rise. Standing beside Knock Out, she realized this was the first time the two of them had been alone together since before the war. As her thoughts drifted back to a time she had spent most of her life trying to forget, she could not help but give Knock Out a sidelong glance. She almost asked him what he thought the future held for him, for _their kind_ , once he was released, if he ever _would be_ released, but quickly decided against it. It was a ridiculous thing to ask. He would probably just laugh at her anyway, and tell her she should have cross-trained as a Medic like he had. _Dammit_ , she shuttered her optics with the realization _, I shoulda been a Medic!_ With an internal sigh, she pushed all that away for later processing, opting instead for a distraction.

“A shuttle came in last night,” Arcee said as the lift finally stopped and the door frames parted. She stepped into the hallway, Knock Out following after her.

“Really?” Knock Out seemed genuinely surprised. “Already? Who was on it? Are they ‘Cons or ‘Bots?”

Arcee smiled at the obvious paranoia leaking into Knock Out’s vocalizer. “You’ll see. You look really awful, by the way,” she had never been one to pass up an opportunity to bug Knock Out about his finish when it was looking less than perfect, and she smirked now as they rounded a corner.

“ _Thank_ you,” Knock Out turned his chin up to her at that, choosing to outwardly take it as a joking compliment, though inwardly he was completely incensed that he had not seen the inside of a wash rack or an oil bath in stellar-cycles. “Good thing there’s no one on this ship to impress.”

“Pft, that kind of slag won’t work around here, Knock Out,” Arcee rolled her optics at the fact that his mind even still processed things that way.

Now it was Knock Out’s turn to smirk as he glanced back to her. “Oh? Well, _you_ would know, right?”

Arcee vented a sigh as she brought a hand to her faceplates. “I hate you _so_ much,” she said, as she had been repeatedly saying to him over the course of millions of years, for as long as they had known each other. In the beginning, before the war, it had been said in jest, a joke between the two of them whenever Knock Out called her out on being incorrect about something, or when he teased her about her finish, or “her” Senator’s political maneuverings. But once the war started and sides were chosen, the hate became real.

“The feeling’s mutual, dearie,” Knock Out replied to the now customary call-and-response. No one ever questioned why an Autobot and a Decepticon would say they hated each other every time they met.

Arcee said nothing more as they continued to walk, now in silence, her databanks dredging up plenty of old pre-war memories. The more she recalled, the more she found herself wishing she could trust her former friend enough to have an actual conversation about their shared past, but Knock Out’s wartime choices were making it very, very difficult for her to trust him, with anything. She considered herself lucky they had both come to a mutual agreement to keep their true functions a secret for as long as they had.  She supposed she should be able to build off that trust, but that still seemed like an impossible task.

Arcee paused at the open entrance to the medbay once they reached it, spotting Ratchet at one of the counters. “Here he is, Ratchet.”

“Thank you, Arcee,” Ratchet called from his spot, not bothering to turn around as he moved tools from a drawer to a tray on the countertop.

Arcee made sure to catch Knock Out’s eye as he walked down the ramp into the medbay. In silence, she pointed to him, mimed a talking mouth with one of her hands, then aimed her pointed finger at her own head and “pulled” the trigger.

Knock Out glared after her, about to speak his mind, until he remembered they were no longer alone. By the time he thought of the rudest hand gesture he could think of to reciprocate, Arcee had left. With a mutter to himself, he turned and started towards Ratchet, though his gaze was drawn toward Bumblebee’s medslab, which sat empty. He quickly looked back to Ratchet and bombarded him with questions.

“Where’s Bumblebee? How’s his progress? What’s his status?” Knock Out asked before realizing, too late, how desperate he sounded. He didn’t want to give the impression that he cared _too_ much.

“None of your business, that’s his status,” said Ratchet, still pulling tools as he gave a side-nod to the medslab. “Face down, I’ll start with your back.”

Knock Out glowered at Ratchet’s response, then eyed the slab warily. “Can’t I just sit?”

“If you were changing out the patches on a bot’s back, would you tell them they could sit for it?”

Knock Out could not argue that, and knew that if he did, Ratchet would make some comment about how important it was to finish one’s schooling. Reluctantly, he shifted himself onto the medslab face down and was just aligning his armor plating with the wedge of the raised chest rest so that his face would not be flat against the slab when Ratchet grabbed his servo with a hand. In one quick motion, the old Medic had slapped one end of a stasis cuff around Knock Out’s wrist and the other to the top rail of the medslab.

“Oh, _come on!_ ” Knock Out pushed himself up with his one hand and tried to rip his arm free from the cuff at the same time, but realized he could not do both together, and that attempting to tug himself free would be useless. “ _Really!?_ ” he glared to Ratchet, who had stepped back to the counter. “So much for _trust_ , huh!?”

“Primus forbid I have to leave you here unattended for _five klicks_ and you’ll be trying to access other bots’ medical records or bothering them while they’re trying to heal, so yes, _really_. Here,” Ratchet turned back, a data pad in his hand. He set it down at the top of the slab so that if Knock Out actually laid against the wedge with his chin over the edge he would be able to see it. “Here’s the data pad you requested, it’s got copies of all the local maps. Start marking them.”

Knock Out was fully aware that this setup was just to get him to be still, though if that was what Ratchet wanted, he could have simply _asked_ and not cuffed him down. He knew how to be still, he wasn’t a fragging Childe. Knock Out reached for the pad and found that his fingers were just able to touch the screen, just enough that he could perform the task. “You _know_ ,” Knock Out cast a glare towards Ratchet, who now stood to the left of the slab with his tray of tools nearby, “this would be easier if my _one_ servo wasn’t cuffed.”

“I’m sure you can manage,” Ratchet replied as he set about unscrewing the metal patches from Knock Out’s back with a cordless drill. With a pair of pliers, he removed the first patch and set it aside, inspecting the protoform skin growth underneath, or lack thereof. “Hmm, this could be going better than it is,” Ratchet said as he removed the screws from another patch, making a face as the new protoskin pulled away with the metal covering, which it should not have done. He raised a brow to Knock Out’s still frame. “Doesn’t this hurt?”

“Totally, but I’ve felt worse,” Knock Out said, the rest of his frame unmoving as he flicked his finger across the screen of the data pad, viewing every map that had been made available to him.

Ratchet glared to Knock Out at that. “You could have told me.”

“Why? So you can pump me full of Lytholine again? Keep me nice and sedate and easier to control? Yes, I’ll bet you’d _love_ that,” said Knock Out as he selected a map from the screen and tapped the heading above it.

Ratchet rolled his optics at Knock Out’s words as he stood from his seat and moved away. “I’ll find something topical to apply, then.”

Knock Out glanced to the side, watching Ratchet walk away. Megatron had many proverbs regarding pain*: “Nothing focuses the mind like suffering”, “Pain is weakness leaving the body”, “Pain nourishes courage”, “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”. Knock Out believed them all, but more importantly, he did not want to be so off his rollers on pain dampeners again that someone might attempt to take advantage of him. He counted himself lucky that none of the Autobots had done so already.

Scowling at that thought, Knock Out turned back to the data pad and began to type words into the header of the map: “DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT KNOW THE EXISTING SECURITY MEASURES FOR ANY OF THESE LOCATIONS. APPROACH EACH SITE WITH EXTREME CAUTION”. “You stupid, _stupid_ idiots,” he muttered to himself as he tapped his pointed digits on the screen. With his luck, these morons would walk _right_ into another trap that he had _no_ idea existed and then blame it on him. _Again_. At least this way he could say “I warned you!”

Once the disclaimer header was complete, Knock Out tapped the image of the topographical map itself, selecting the coordinates for the first of many of ammo and weapons cachets that he intended to annotate. He heard Ratchet approaching the slab again, but chose to ignore him.

“Ahh, what have we _here_?” came a voice from the end of the medslab that did _not_ belong to Ratchet. Knock Out quickly raised himself up on his elbow and glanced over his mostly-missing left shoulder, his optics going wide at who he saw there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Only one of Megatron's proverbs on pain is from the actual IDW comics: "Nothing focuses the mind like suffering." The others are quotes from the following people:
> 
> "Pain is weakness leaving the body" -Chesty Puller  
> "Pain nourishes courage" -Mary Tyler Moore  
> "We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey" -Kenji Miyazawa
> 
> Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	18. An Old Aquaintance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *WARNING* There are needles and use of needles in this chapter. It’s not anything horrific, and I didn’t get super detailed with it, but I just thought I’d mention it here, because I understand some people can’t handle anything regarding needles, and I respect that. If you are one of those people, you’d best skip this chapter and scroll down to the author’s notes at the end, where I’ve created a chapter summary.

“Ratchet!” the red, white, and blue Seeker standing at the end of the medslab called to the other Medic, his gaze focused on the data pad he had collected from the tray of tools Ratchet had selected to swap Knock Out’s patches. “Is this the Decepticon _pet_ you mentioned earlier?”

“ _Pharma!?_ ” Knock Out gasped. He could not believe it. Of all the Goddamn luck, _this_ was the bot that came in on the shuttle!?

“He is _not_ a Decepticon anymore, _or_ my _pet_!” Ratchet’s voice carried over to them from across the medbay.

“Well, _whatever_ he is,” Pharma shrugged a winged shoulder, his optics still scanning the data pad. “Hmm….Ohh, _that’s_ right,” he looked up as he spoke, keeping his voice low enough that it would not reach Ratchet’s ageing audials. Pharma smirked to Knock Out as he moved closer and around to the top of the medslab so that he could get a good look at Knock Out’s faceplates. “I _thought_ you looked familiar,” he said as he reached forward and grabbed Knock Out around the chin, raising his head upwards despite Knock Out’s best efforts to pull away.  “Although, you’re not as _pretty_ as you used to be, _that’s_ for sure,” Pharma canted his head downwards a bit, eyeing Knock Out’s frame. “Still hiding that collar around your neck? I told you, I could just cut your head _off_ , make it disappear for good, hehe,” Pharma chuckled as he finally released Knock Out from his grip and looked back to the data pad, flicking through the screens. “Yes, it’s been _quite_ some time, hasn’t it? Well, it’s always _nice_ to see a lesser bot make something of themselves, and you certainly did. I see you then _threw it all away_ by joining the Decepticons, but I know you didn’t have a _proper_ upbringing, so I don’t blame you for making stupid decisions,” Pharma clucked his glossa as he continued to review the screen, then glanced up and across the medbay again as he yelled, “Ratchet!”

“What?” Ratchet yelled back as he pulled a tube from a cabinet.

“I see you’re in the middle of swapping his patches. I would be _more_ than happy to change them for you. I _am_ here to assist after all!”

“That would be helpful, thank you,” Ratchet said as he walked back towards the medslab, handing over the selected tube to Pharma before he glared and pointed a finger to Knock Out, who was a nervous wreck, though Ratchet did not register it. “And Knock Out! Don’t give Pharma any _sass_ , you hear me?”

Knock Out blinked as Ratchet walked away and just…just _left him there_ , with Pharma! The data pad of maps completely forgotten, Knock Out watched Pharma’s every move as the bot gave him a wicked smirk and stepped to the wall to drag the privacy screen out and down the length of the medslab. That was _not good._

“I would _really_ rather you stay the _frag_ away from me, Seeker-Ratchet,” Knock Out hissed Pharma’s nick-name, well-known to ‘Cons and ‘Bots alike. He eyed Pharma warily as the bot set the privacy screen into place.  “Where’s your better half?” Knock Out continued, “I’d much rather see _him_.”

“Ambulon?” Pharma scoffed as he took up the seat that Ratchet had formerly occupied. “He had to stay on Delphi, I’m afraid. _Someone_ has to keep that place up and running. Now, I believe Ratchet said no _sass_ , correct? Right to disobeying direct orders, I see. _That’s_ never a good sign. Then again, I’d expect no less from a Decepticon,” Pharma looked up from the data pad then, eyeing Knock Out’s back for a moment. “Hmm…All of this is healing poorly,” he poked Knock Out’s bare frame with a finger.

“Ow! Get your Goddamn servos _off_ me!” Knock Out snarled as he shifted to try and send a kick to Pharma’s frame, but the Seeker clearly saw that coming and simply leaned aside.

“Now, now,” Pharma said as he looked back to the screen again, scrolling past several log entries, “I’m sure Ratchet would frown upon you attempting to strike an Autobot, and if you try that again, I’ll actually tell him.” Pharma paused in his scrolling and raised both brows, “Ahh, _here’s_ your problem,” he smiled and glanced up to Knock Out. “You’re _four million years_ overdue on your inoculations.”

“ _What_? No, I’m not! I don’t need those!” Knock Out continued to glare after Pharma through all the proximity alarms going off on his internal feed. It wasn’t that he feared Pharma, not entirely, it was the fact that Pharma knew things, things from Knock Out’s past, and far, _far_ more than what Ratchet had recently discovered. And unlike Ratchet, Pharma would find a way to use those things against him, Knock Out was certain of it. Why the Autobots even _allowed_ the Seeker to remain on their side during the war was a mystery to him; in Knock Out’s opinion, Phrama would have made an excellent Decepticon.

“Tsk, of course you do!” Pharma said with a patronizing tone in his vocalizer. He set the data pad back on the tray before he leaned down to inspect Knock Out’s wound a bit closer and give it a few more pokes here and there. “You think just because you somehow managed to change functions your frame doesn’t still require annual immunizations to perform at its best? This _perfectly_ explains why your protoskin growth is so inadequate. You’ve been denying yourself proper medical care for ages,” Pharma walked down and around the foot of the medslab, coming up along the right side. He smiled as he pushed a button on the underside of the slab, lowering the chest rest wedge, so that Knock Out was now literally face down on the medslab. Knock Out quickly tried to push himself up on his elbow, but Pharma placed his hand on Knock Out’s remaining shoulder tire axle and leaned into it, so that Knock Out’s chest and faceplates were being squashed against the slab under Pharma’s weight. “I’m sure I can find all of the vaccines around here somewhere,” Pharma said, and then he leaned down close, his mouth inches from Knock Out’s audial as he spoke softly. “Don’t worry, all your secrets are safe with me, as long as you let me have a little fun with you. I’ll be right back.”

Knock Out cringed, trying to pull away as Pharma got too close for comfort, but the bot had him pinned to the slab. Pharma chuckled before he finally released the tire, then moved and disappeared behind the privacy screen as he went off on his search.  Knock Out began furiously pulling at the stasis cuff around his wrist, knowing he wouldn’t be able to break it, but there was a possibility he could break the rail at the top of the slab. He was not aware that First Aid had been walking down the ramp into the medbay just in time to see Pharma leaving the area. The Medic’s words startled him into freezing mid-pull as First Aid came up alongside the slab on his right.

“I see you’ve met Pharma! He and I go way –” First Aid began, but his words were cut short as Knock Out managed to snag him by his servo with his cuffed hand and practically tug him onto the medslab with him.

“First Aid!” _My savior!_ Knock Out clung to First Aid’s arm, giving cautious glances over his shoulder every few seconds as he spoke. “Listen to me! _Listen!_ Get this bot _away_ from me, he’s…” Knock Out paused, unsure of how to continue. He could _not_ tell First Aid the truth here, that would uncover way too much about way too many things from his past that he’d only just got done reassuring Arcee he would _not_ speak of. He had to keep Pharma from talking though, and anyone who knew Pharma would know that was a difficult task. ‘ _Your secrets are safe with me’ my aft!_ Whatever Pharma had in mind for “fun” was not something he wanted to experience. He had to keep the mech _away_ from him, and he intended to enlist First Aid’s unknowing assistance for that. What would make First Aid see things _his_ way without revealing the truth? Maybe something First Aid hated? “He’s not qualified!” was the best Knock Out could come up with, recalling First Aid’s unwillingness to let Knock Out himself try to fix his faceplates as they sheltered from the acid rain storm all those years ago. “I don’t think he’s licensed to practice medicine!”

“What?” First Aid raised a brow, one side of his visor perking up in question. Did Knock Out not know who Pharma was? “Knock Out, of _course_ he is!” He did not understand what Knock Out was talking about, or why the bot was now apparently okay with First Aid being so physically close. The last time First Aid had spoken to him, Knock Out had been adamant about not being touched, but now here he was, all but hugging First Aid’s servo. Regardless of that however, First Aid allowed Knock Out to continue clinging onto him, if that was what made him feel better.

“Knock Out,” First Aid put on a reassuring tone and EM signature, “this is _Pharma_! He discovered Cybercrosis! He won the Nominus Prize for Medicine! He’s also one of my combinermates,” he said with a smile, thankful to finally have at least _one_ of them back in his presence.   

“Oh my _God_ , are you _serious!?_ ” Knock Out gaped to First Aid, who was startled by Knock Out’s look of genuine, honest-to-Primus _concern_ for First Aid’s well-being. It was that same look Knock Out had given him cycles ago, but First Aid had chalked it up to the Lytholine. “What part does he transform into, the aft-hole!?”

“ _Knock Out_!” First Aid could not believe what he was hearing. Had Ratchet given Knock Out more drugs without mentioning it? “Don’t be so rude!”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Pharma stepped around the privacy screen, three thick hypoproto needles sticking out from his hand where he gripped the cylinders between his knuckles, “I found all three. Aren’t you so _lucky_!” Pharma smirked to Knock Out, who was again glaring at him over his shoulder, then he spotted First Aid. “Oh, good morning, _Aid_. Was it _you_ who applied these patches?” he nodded to Knock Out’s frame as he plucked the caps of each of the needles.

Knock Out flicked his gaze back and forth between Pharma and First Aid, carefully watching their interactions. He did not like the way Pharma called First Aid “ _Aid_ ”, as though it were some sort of insult. First Aid however, apparently did not notice, or did not care.

“Well, Sir,” First Aid began, shrugging a shoulder, “it was Ratchet, but –”

“Why didn’t he apply any nanites?” Pharma interrupted.

“We uhh,” First Aid started again, looking a bit guilty, “…we had to use them all on Bumblebee and the last batch got worn out and went dormant. You know how they can get overworked.”

“A shame,” Pharma tsked, shaking his head before he gestured to Knock Out’s back with a hand. “Clearly, you can see the protoskin lacks sufficient covalence to bond with the exoskeletal cations. Also, did you know he’s four million years behind on his vaccines?” Pharma picked up the data pad on the tray and handed it to First Aid, giving a tiny little smirk to Knock Out as he did so.

Knock Out watched the data pad being passed over his frame and silently prayed that First Aid was not smart enough to put everything together the way Ratchet had. First Aid stared at the screen for a moment, though Knock Out made sure to cling to First Aid’s servo even tighter so that the bot could not use that hand to scroll through the text.

“He is? Oh,” First Aid eyed the CMRD log for a moment, noting the last date of the last inoculation given, but nothing more. He glanced up and handed the data pad back to Pharma, “no, I hadn’t noticed.”

Pharma took the data pad back and set it aside. “It’s prolonging his recovery. But it’s fine, I have all the vaccines right here,” he smiled, brandishing the needles between his fingers.

“Oh! Good thing they were in the inventory!” said First Aid before he glanced down to Knock Out, who still refused to let go of him. “Knock Out, why weren’t you keeping current with your vaccinations?”

Knock Out’s optics went wide at the question as he tried frantically to come up with a decent answer, “Um….”

“No matter,” oddly enough, it was Pharma who saved Knock Out from that explanation as he spoke. Pharma moved around to the other side of the slab to stand beside First Aid, “we can correct that discrepancy right now.” Pharma set his left hand onto Knock Out’s right hip and trailed his fingers in a very unnecessary way along the armor plating there, pausing at the area most commonly referred to as the skid plates. Like the rest of any bot’s armor, it could all be removed, but Pharma’s practiced hand found the release latch to just one of the plates there and quickly pulled it, revealing, in non-medical terms, Knock Out’s bare protoform aft-cheek.  

Knock Out froze, his optics narrowing into tiny slits as he filled his EM field with rage and intimidation and projected it forcefully outwards. “Get your hand. Off my aft. _Right now!_ ” _I don’t fragging think so._ “You son of a—”

“What’s that?” Pharma said with a smile as he casually leaned his winged shoulder against Knock Out’s right wheel axle again, effectively shoving Knock Out back down onto the slab.

“I said get your hands off my aft!” Knock Out turned his face to the right, so that it was not being crushed against the slab. “If you _insist_ on giving me pointless injections, you can stick those needles in my servo instead!” _Fine_ , he would accept the inoculations, but _not_ like this.

“Now, now, don’t be ridiculous,” Pharma continued to lean on Knock Out’s tire axle as though it was a perfectly acceptable place to lounge. He eyed the three hypoproto needles in his right hand, debating which one to use first. “You know how _sore_ your servo would be after three jabs with these needles, and you only have _just the one_. I wouldn’t want to _hinder_ your movement.”

“That _does_ kinda make sense,” First Aid offered up to Knock Out, trying to ease the bot’s agitation, which First Aid was very aware of.

“ _No_ , it doesn’t!” Knock Out blinked in shock to First Aid’s attempt to rationalize this ridiculousness. “If he sticks them in my aft plates I’ll barely be able to _walk!”_

“Oh please, it’s not like you’re needing to walk anywhere,” said Pharma as he selected a needle from the group with his left hand. “It will only hurt for a few cycles.”

First Aid shrugged to that, glancing down to Knock Out, who had yet to release First Aid’s servo. “That’s also true.”

“He just wants to check out my aft!” Knock Out practically yelled to First Aid, not understanding how the other Medic did not see through this obvious ruse.

“ _Really_?” Pharma glanced back to Knock Out in doubt. “You think your aft is so appealing? Please, don’t flatter yourself,” Pharma rolled his optics before he then quite blatantly looked right at Knock Out’s aft, jabbed the first needle into the protoflesh there, and depressed the plunger on the back of the vial.

Knock Out turned his faceplates into the medslab and yelled from the pain, despite his momentary efforts to save his dignity and not give Pharma the satisfaction of knowing he had caused him such anguish. Frag whatever Megatron and taught him about suffering, that slag _hurt_. “AHHH! God DAMMIT!”

“That’s one!” Pharma said with a smile as he tossed the empty syringe onto the tray, his tone suggesting he was enjoying this way too much.

“Why are you letting him _do_ this to me!?” Knock Out looked back to First Aid with all the desperation in the world.

“Knock Out,” First Aid vented a sigh, bringing his free hand up to pat Knock Out’s servo apologetically, for as always, he did not enjoy seeing any bot suffer, though he knew that in this instance, it was for the best, “he’s right, you should have stayed current with these from the get-go. Why did you wait so long?”

“Because I don’t _need_ them anymore!” Knock Out tried to reason with First Aid without giving away too much information. “I’m a _doctor_! Don’t you think I know what immunizations I— AHHH!” Knock Out shuttered his optics tight and threw his head back, yelling again as the sting of the second needle ran right up his spinal strut.

“Right,” First Aid sighed again, still patting Knock Out’s servo as he tried his best to comfort him, “but we’ve been over this already. You’re _not_ _a doctor_ unless you have a degree from an accredited school of learning.”

“Two!” Pharma declared, tossing the second empty syringe onto the tray before he raised a brow to First Aid’s words, and then to Knock Out. “Oh, you never _got_ your degree? So, you’ve been _masquerading_ as a Medic for the past four million years, is that it?” he shook his head at that before stabbing the third needle into Knock Out’s protoflesh and pushing the plunger in with his thumb, twisting the syringe ever-so-slightly, not enough that First Aid would notice, but certainly enough that Knock Out would feel it. “Boy, I _hate_ liars, don’t you, _Aid_?” Pharma said as he looked to the other Medic for confirmation.

Knock Out tried to stifle his yell but ended up crying out in pain and burying his faceplates into First Aid’s servo instead. Pharma was stabbing the damn needles into the same spot every single time. It was the exact same spot, _every Goddamn time_. The mech wasn’t even _trying_ to space it out to give his protoskin a break, he was _deliberately_ making it as painful as possible, and trying to make that pain last for as _long_ as possible. It was _not_ the proper way to give vaccinations, even in the aft-cheek. Adding insult to injury was apparently perfectly acceptable around here. Knock Out tried to convey all of that to First Aid, but it only came out as a whimper.

A memory suddenly pulled itself up out of Knock Out’s data banks: He was standing in this very medbay, walking down a line of Vehicons who all stood waiting to get their annual vaccinations. There were always a few in every group that were terrified of needles, and Knock Out now recalled laughing at them, using the same uncaring tone in his vocalizer as Pharma, finding their apprehension genuinely amusing, just like Pharma, and causing an unnecessary amount of pain when he jabbed the hypoproto needles into the same spots on their upper servos because he _knew_ it would hurt, _just like Pharma_. Knock Out winced at the realization that he and Pharma were actually not so different, and the very thought made him whine all the more, his words muffled against First Aid’s arm as he clung to it.

“Aww, it’s okay,” said First Aid, mistaking Knock Out’s exclamations for shame. He raised his free hand and gently pet Knock Out’s lowered helm. “You don’t have to feel embarrassed!”

“Three,” Pharma sighed, as though he was disappointed that it was over already. He tossed the final empty syringe onto the tray before smirking to Knock Out. “There, was that so bad?”

“ _YES!”_ Knock Out lifted his head and snarled to Pharma, who smiled wickedly in return.

“It _was_?” Pharma grinned as he closed the skid plate against Knock Out’s protoflesh, purposely leaving his hand there to press the plates against the sensitive protoskin underneath to cause even more pain.  “Better push some more Lytholine then. If you can’t handle a few needles, you _certainly_ won’t be able to handle a patch change. You _know_ I have to scrub the deteriorating protoflesh clear of your frame if you want to avoid scarring.”

If Knock Out could not keep Pharma _away_ from him, his last hope was to keep First Aid _with_ him. He quickly looked back to First Aid, now clinging to his arm so tightly that his pointed fingers were leaving little scratches on First Aid’s armor.  “ _Do not_ let him give me drugs and _do not_ leave me alone with this mech!” he pleaded.

First Aid rolled his optics at Knock Out’s dramatics. “Knock Out, you’ll be _fine_! Pharma’s the best doctor in all of Cybertron!” though First Aid paused there as he pondered his own statement. “Well, aside from Ratchet, that is.”

“First Aid, please! _”_ Knock Out panicked when the Medic did not immediately pick up on his desperation. How the frag could the other bot not _see_ this mistreatment!? He buried his face into First Aid’s servo and projected as much anxiety and vulnerability into his EM field as he could manage, and it was hardly all made up, either. _“Please!”_ he begged First Aid, and so fragging what if Pharma picked up on _any_ of it.

First Aid blinked down to Knock Out, completely confused by his words and actions and signature, but he quickly determined that it was all real feelings that knock Out was expressing, and although those feelings were unexpected, First Aid was not going to discount them, even where Pharma was concerned. “Alright,” First Aid sighed, rolling his optics again as he laid his free hand on Knock Out’s helm once more, “alright. Pharma, Sir, he doesn’t need the Lytholine, he’ll be fine.”

“Oh, you think so?” Pharma raised a brow, “Are you _sure_? Is that your _professional medical option_?” Pharma said with a challenging tone to is vocalizer.

“Yes, it is,” now First Aid raised a brow at Pharma’s line of questioning, which seemed unwarranted, though because of that, First Aid was quick to add “Sir,” at the end of his response.

“Fine,” Pharma relented, throwing both hands into the air. “ _You_ should really be doing this then, _Aid._ You know this mech’s specs better than I do,” the Seeker shrugged his winged shoulders once before he started to walk off, though he paused to glare back to Knock Out. “I’ll be sure to mention to Ratchet what an _unruly patient_ you are, Knock Out,” Pharma hissed, though he did pause at the end of the medslab before he left, glancing back to First Aid. “I brought along some supply crates. I’ll go check the stocks for nanites, he clearly needs them.”

“Thank you,” First Aid offered a smile to his combinermate, and even though it was hidden behind the mask, it triggered an honest smile in response from Pharma before the mech departed the medbay.

Knock Out peeked up from First Aid’s servo, waiting until Pharma was up the ramp and out of his field of vision before he heaved a sigh of relief, finally releasing First Aid from his grip as he let his forehelm thud against the medslab. “Oh, thank God.”

First Aid rolled his optics as Knock Out finally let him go and he was able to move to the other side of the slab. He appreciated that Knock Out now apparently felt safe around him, but he could not get over the mech’s earlier statements regarding Pharma. “You’re really mean, y’know that?” he scolded Knock Out as he eyed the tools and tried to decipher where Pharma had left off in removing the patches.

“First Aid!” Knock Out turned his gaze to the left so that he could fully see the Medic, “that bot is _evil_! Can’t you _tell_!? Can’t your…your _super-sensors_ pick up on that!?” He could not _believe_ First Aid, of all the overly-sensitive mechs, was unable to read such an obvious signature. Then again, maybe the fact that he was combinermates with Pharma blinded him to certain aspects of the mechs personality, Knock Out would not discount that possibility. Combiner minds were…weird. If Knock Out had to assign them all a personality trait, he would readily say that they were “weird.” He’d had limited interactions with Combiners throughout his life, though of those few interactions, he had noticed one common trend: Whichever bot was the lead, whichever bot held any sort of leadership position, the other bots would blindly follow that bot to the bitter end, and Pharma was clearly that bot where Defensor was concerned. It did not matter if the leader’s decisions were irrational or unwise, the other bots would follow, even if it meant their own destruction. Knock Out had been waiting for a response from First Aid, though he quickly realized that the Medic would never be able to see things his way, that he would _never_ be able to process it all from an outsider’s perspective, and for that Knock Out felt a sudden pang of sadness for the smaller bot, that he could not see his way out of that relationship, whether it was voluntary or otherwise.

“Pharma is _not_ evil!” First Aid glared now as he sorted through the tools on the tray. “He’s a _genius_! He and Ratchet taught me everything I know! I’ve mind-melded with him _hundreds_ of times, for Primus’s sake! If he were evil, don’t you think _I’d_ be one of the _first_ to know!?” First Aid looked up then, glaring towards Knock Out.

Knock Out blinked at the anger First Aid was sending his way. He held First Aid’s gaze for only a moment before he quickly looked elsewhere, trying but failing to ignore the feeling that First Aid was now somehow compromised. It eerily reminded him of the vision he had experienced of Megatron having total control over his, no, over _Bumblebee’s_ mind and frame, as though Megatron could manipulate Bumblebee’s thoughts to reflect his own.

“You’re just _mad_ at him because he caught you not taking your inoculations! What were you even _thinking_!?” First Aid continued on as he sorted through the tools on the tray. “You _know_ that vaccinations exist purely for…Wait a minute,” First Aid paused, his gaze focusing inward as he ran through his database of IMA records before he glared to Knock Out again. “That’s one of the classes you _failed_ at the IMA, isn’t it? That’s right,” he confirmed his internal findings once more. “’Mechular Biology 402’. You _see_!? You _see_ what happens when you don’t finish your schooling? You’ve left yourself open to developing all sorts of illnesses and disorders for the past four million years because you didn’t know any better! You’re lucky you even made it _this_ far!”

Knock Out eyed First Aid again. Alright, _maybe_ that was true, but that did _not_ make up for Pharma’s behavior, past, present, or otherwise. The problem was, Knock Out could not for the life of him figure out how to convey that great mistrust to First Aid, to Pharma’s combinermate. It was pointless, really, to even attempt such a feat. Knock Out sighed, burying his face in his hand. “First Aid, you don’t understand…”

“No, _you_ don’t understand, Knock Out,” First Aid scowled as he spoke, turning his gaze back onto the tools. “But you know what? That’s okay,” First Aid sighed, going quiet for a moment as released his anger. It was pointless to get angry at ignorance, he knew better than that. He glanced back up to Knock Out and gave him a small smile, Knock Out could tell it was there, despite the face mask. “I’ve still got all the IMA manuals and study guides on file. I’ll put all the classes you’re missing onto a data pad, and you can study them and take the exams and then you can be a _real_ Medic. How’s that sound?”

“….Fine. Whatever,” Knock Out muttered, ignoring the dig at his lack of an official title. He did not look back to First Aid as he spoke, tucking his servo under his chin and glancing elsewhere. Not even First Aid was innocent and free of manipulation, was he? Fragging Pharma. Knock Out’s optics slowly narrowed as he thought of the Seeker and all the ways he would like to kill him: Slowly, and painfully, and with needles, _big_ ones. Primus dammit, his aft-cheek was _throbbing_. That son of a glitch!

Ratchet rounded the privacy screen and moved past the medslab to the counter, opening one of the cabinets that hung above it. “I heard you didn’t listen to a _word_ I said, Knock Out,” he muttered as he removed a canister from one of the shelves, then turned his head to look back to the slab and give a questioning look to Knock Out. “Care to explain? What?” Ratchet glared to the bot, mirroring the narrowed gaze that he was receiving from the ex-‘Con. “What’s _that_ look for?”

“Pharma got him up to date in his booster shots,” First Aid said, when Knock Out did not offer up an explanation for the scowl he was giving Ratchet.

“Oh. Is _that_ all?” Ratchet rolled his optics. _“_ Well, you were _due_ , Knock Out.”

“That’s what I told him,” First Aid said with a shrug as he picked up the drill and moved to remove another of the patches of Knock Out’s back, quickly adding to Knock Out, “I’m sorry if this hurts.”

Knock Out continued to glare up at Ratchet despite the growing pain in his back, not saying a word.

“Why are you so mad?” Ratchet shook his head to Knock Out’s attitude. “ _I_ was going to give them to you anyway as soon as I was able to locate them.”

“He’s mad because Pharma injected them into his aft cheek instead of his servo,” First Aid casually offered up the truth as he removed another patch and tossed it onto the tray.

Ratchet could not stop the chuckle from escaping his vocalizer at that. He knew this was not the way to gain Knock Out’s trust, but the very idea of it all and the look of indignation Knock Out was giving him was just too hilarious. “Heh…He did?”

“I hate you,” Knock Out growled in response to Ratchet’s smile, then turned his head to left just enough to be sure that First Aid could hear him as well. “I hate _all_ of you!”

First Aid gasped at Knock Out’s words, looking genuinely hurt as he shifted his gaze to Knock Out’s face. “Hate” was still a strong word to First Aid, one that he rarely used himself. “You don’t mean that!”

“Ohhhh _yes_ I do,” Knock Out turned back, setting his chin on his wrist again as he looked away.

“That’s Pharma for you,” Ratchet merely shrugged, still smiling as he looked back to the open cabinet.

“And I hate _him_ most of all!” Knock Out replied.

“Don’t _say_ that!” First Aid paused in his work. “He was just trying to help you!”

“While we’re on the topic of how much I hate you all,” Knock Out continued, recalling a question he had been meaning to ask them both, “which one of you _wrecked_ my face?” he tapped a finger against the weld line running from the corner of his mouth on the left side of his face to the underside of his chin.

Ratchet glanced over his shoulder and scoffed at that. “You did that to yourself.”

“I would _never!_ ”

“It’s true. When you came back online after Bulkhead brought you back from the Skyway, you were out of sorts and started slicing into your chassis with that _stupid_ saw of yours, and you chewed up your face in the process. It’s your own fault,” Ratchet shrugged.

“Did you let me do the welding while I was completely out of my mind, too? Because that’s what it _looks_ like!” Knock Out continued to glare up at Ratchet.

“ _I_ did the welding,” First Aid said, looking as guilty as he felt.

“And you call yourself a doctor?” Knock Out turned his head once more to shift his glare back to First Aid.

“I was in a hurry!” First Aid actually glared back

“You know what? It’s fine,” Knock Out looked back to Ratchet once more. “I can fix it myself, I just need a rotary sander and a laser scalpel.”

Ratchet again rolled his optics. “I’m not giving you access to medical instruments, Knock Out, you must be joking.”

“At least let me sand the soldering down! I look like slag!”

“Nope.”

“They’re _my_ fragging tools, and it’s my _face_!” Knock Out practically pleaded to Ratchet. Between Arcee telling him he looked awful and Pharma stating that he wasn’t as pretty as he used to be, he was now beyond paranoid that he was no longer the best-looking bot on the planet. So what if that made him vain? So what if that made him self-centered and conceited? These other bots didn’t _appreciate_ that there were _standards_ that ought to be met and Primus dammit, _someone_ needed to try and uphold them, for the sake of their very _race_!

“You know what makes your face look even worse?” Pharma said with a smile, walking back into the bay and joining the others around the medslab just in time to hear the tail-end of the conversation. He moved to the front of the slab and gave the right side of Knock Out’s faceplates a gentle pat with his hand, much to Knock Out’s chagrin. “When you scowl and sulk like a Sparkling. Here are the nanites, Aid,” Pharma offered a canister over to First Aid with his other hand.

“Thank you, Pharma,” First Aid happily accepted the container and set it down on the tray.

“You’re welcome. Ratchet,” Pharma stepped away from them all again, “I have some contemporary data concerning T-cogs, if you’re interested. Perhaps you’d like to look it over? We might be able to find a fix for Bumblebee.”

“Certainly,” Ratchet pulled one more jar from the cabinets before he closed them and started after Pharma, though not before he sent a final glare to Knock Out. “Stop being a gearstick. You wanted a second chance?” with a finger, he tapped the data pad of maps that still lay on the medslab, “Get to it.” Ratchet reached under the slab and pressed the button there, raising the chest rest again so that Knock Out did not have to simultaneously try to hold his weight up and type at the same time.

Knock Out glared down at the data pad for a moment before he sighed and pulled it closer to himself once more. He had told Ratchet he would mark the maps, it had been _his_ idea after all, so he would do it, despite the _humiliation_ the rest of them seemed so intent on doling out to him. _Ungrateful bastards, all of them!_

First Aid eyed Knock Out briefly as he removed another patch with the drill and set it aside. “I’m sorry about the weld,” he could not help the guilt that emanated from his EM field. “I’m not very good at it and….I was in a hurry. We were trying to save you and Bee at the same time,” he sighed. “I know that’s not a decent excuse.”

Knock Out shuttered his optics as First Aid’s signature of guilt rolled over him, instantly drowning out his own feelings of anger and resentment. Goddamn, the bot was _good_. Knock Out huffed as he opened his optics again to stare at the data pad. “It’s okay,” he found himself saying, even though it was _not_ okay, but he felt compelled to say it to First Aid, just the same, and he shook his head at himself. “Primus, why can’t I stay _mad_ at you for more than five klicks? You have this…this _gift_ , or something! You’re like one of those ‘Outliers’ bots always used to talk about. I don’t know how you do it,” Knock Out glanced over his shoulder to steal a glance from First Aid. “It’s _annoying_.”

First Aid paused in opening the canister of nanites to offer a faint smile back to Knock Out. “Is that a complement?”

“ _No!”_ Knock Out was quick to reply, narrowing his eyes again before he looked back to the data pad as he touched the screen once more. “I don’t know,” he paused then, reviewing his previous words. “ _Maybe_.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” First Aid said, smiling behind his mask as he opened the canister.

Knock Out continued to glare at the data pad before him, though the glare did not last long as he noted the map glowing on the screen under his fingertips: It was a grid of the area he had first encountered First Aid on Cybertron. With a finger, he moved the map along the screen, finding the exact location where First Aid had run into him, where they had stopped so that Knock Out could scavenge voltage regulators from dead bots’ frames, the fallen habitation complex that sheltered them from the acid rain, and the location of the Starhopper that Knock Out had then flown to Earth. He recalled that long trip, the reluctant conversations they’d had, the music First Aid had discovered, all of which lead to Knock Out’s ultimate realization that First Aid was too _good_ and pure and innocent to become a Decepticon.

And in thinking of First Aid’s goodness and purity and innocence, Knock Out again felt real concern that the mech had been Combining and mind-melding with Pharma for Primus-knows how many mega-cycles. He felt _bad_ for the bot that his combinermate was a complete afthole, though Knock Out stalled his thought process there as he noted that he himself apparently had that quality in common with Pharma, his own memory banks confirmed it not ten minutes ago.

Knock Out stared at the data pad screen without really seeing the map anymore as he wondered why he suddenly felt so bad for First Aid and simultaneously so guilty for having treated him like slag from the second he had first met the bot up until this very moment. Here was the kindest bot he’d ever encountered, and he treated him like garbage when all First Aid had ever done to him was be nice, his lack of a medical degree notwithstanding. It was one of those rare moments that caused Knock Out to shutter his optics and ask himself “ _What the frag is **wrong** with me?”_ But he did not know how to make amends, for anything, so he could only offer up the first thing that registered as a minor solution to the problem, which really would only serve to make _himself_ feel better about everything, even if it was only temporary.

First Aid glanced up from the nanites he was spreading across Knock Out’s shoulder frame, focusing on his internal feed as a message from Knock Out appeared on his HUD. He did not open it. “What’s this?” he asked instead, raising a brow to the other mech.

“The access code to the Starhopper,” said Knock Out, his gaze still on the map in front of him. “It’s in shuttle bay five. It hasn’t flown in about a year; I think the Energon conduits finally bit the dust, but all the Earth music is still on the drives, as far as I know,” Knock Out paused, now thinking this was a stupid thing to offer up. It certainly _sounded_ stupid in his head, but it was too late to go back now. Best to find a valid excuse as to _why_ he was offering it to begin with. “I’m sure you’ve built up your own collection since your time on Earth, but you might as well have a look at what’s there before Ultra Magnus figures out the library exists and deletes it all because Earth music isn’t up to Autobot Code, or whatever bizarre, self-imposed ideology he makes you all operate under,” Knock Out rolled his optics.

First Aid smiled to that and finally opened the message to view the access code before he stored it away. “Thank you,” he said, both surprised and flattered at Knock Out’s generosity. He did not mention it aloud, but he had been keenly aware of the guilt rippling off Knock Out’s frame, there was no way he could _not_ have noticed it, as he was so close to him, sitting right beside the medslab. He’d not been sure what was causing it, but he had not thought it was over _him_.  “You know,” First Aid continued, attempting to reciprocate the goodwill, “I never got the chance to tell you ‘thank you’ for getting me out of that rain storm and then trading me to the Autobots,” he smiled at the memory. “I know that maybe….maybe that wasn’t your _original_ intent, and maybe it didn’t really matter to you, but it mattered to _me_. You saved my life, Knock Out. Your choices saved my life, I’m certain of it. _Thank you_.”

Knock Out heard the words, but the second First Aid’s signature started to convey even a trace of gratitude towards him, Knock Out quickly reanalyzed the data entering his receptors, and pulled all of the aspects that might trigger and emotional response, so that only the facts could filter through his processor. The rest he buried elsewhere in his mind;  He had been saving all of those emotional responses for quite some time, which he would only release to his processor when he felt he was truly worthy of experiencing them, and in a place where no one else could see him having those feelings, because to do so would get a bot beaten where he came from, and that was a risk he could not take, not even now.

Despite all of the data manipulation going on inside Knock Out’s brain node, he was still able to offer First Aid a response, his optics still seemingly focused on the data pad before him.

“You’re welcome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Pharma’s back on Cybtertron. He knows Knock Out’s true caste and recognizes Knock Out from before the war, though no further details on that are given. Knock Out worries that Pharma will reveal his past to everyone else. While assisting Ratchet in the medbay, Pharma makes sure Knock Out receives the vaccinations he’s been avoiding for four million years.  
> First Aid reveals to Knock Out that Pharma is one of his long-lost combinermates, which Knock Out is horrified to hear.  
> Knock Out asks Ratchet for tools to fix the bad welding job First Aid made on his face and Ratchet refuses.  
> First Aid offers to upload the IMA classes Knock Out never passed onto a data pad so that he can take the exams and become “a real Medic”, to which Knock Out begrudgingly agrees.  
> Knock Out has a fleeting moment where he realizes he’s been treating First Aid poorly. In an attempt to remedy this, he offers First Aid the access code to his Starhopper shuttle docked onboard the Nemesis, which still contains the music files they listened to while travelling to Earth several years ago, and First Aid accepts. First Aid then thanks Knock Out for moving him out of the acid rain and trading him to the Autobots.


	19. A Walk

Bumblebee’s blue optics adjusted to the darkness of the brig as he stepped off the lift and slowly made his way down the corridor toward Knock Out’s cell. The dim overhead light fixture above Knock Out’s berth and the orange glowbars were the only legitimate source of light down there; the Nemesis was beginning to run low on Energon, and the backup generators that had been sustaining the ship’s normal operating functions were slowly starting to give out. Energy consumption had to be cut wherever possible, which meant shutting off the lights on areas of the ship where there was little activity, and the brig was one of them.

With the dimmed lights, the brig looked and felt more ominous than ever, and Bumblebee found himself imagining what sorts of horrible things might have taken place in the cells as he passed them by. He had never taken a moment to look into any of them except the one inhabited by Knock Out, and although all of them stood open save the one the ex-‘Con powered down in, Bumblebee swore he caught shadows moving within them when he walked past, shadows that were not his own. Bumblebee was no “scaredy-cat”, as the humans would say, but he certainly would not want to be spending much time down there.

Apparently Knock Out was no “scaredy-cat” either, for as Bumblebee came to stand before his cell, he found the bot sprawled facedown across the recharge slab, his optics shuttered, seemingly oblivious to the dark shadows beyond the bars.

Bumblebee stood watching Knock Out for a moment as the memory of the last time they had spoken surfaced from his data banks, recalling how their spark chambers had simultaneously begun to open, seemingly of their own accord. He recalled how quickly Knock Out had pulled away from him at that, when Bumblebee himself had felt the exact opposite of wanting to pull away. He knew his mind hadn’t been quite at its peak performance level when they’d had that interaction, but he had felt…what? Something. _Something_ had been going on there between them, and whatever it was had been interrupted by Knock Out stepping away and then Ratchet reentering the medbay. Bumblebee had spent countless hours in the past few cycles wishing he could speak to Knock Out, to continue that conversation they had started, and now, finally, he was getting his chance.

With a small inward vent, Bumblebee raised his hand to the button panel, shutting off the glowbars as he smiled down to Knock Out. He knew he might not be able to get the mech to talk much, about _anything_ really, but he could try. It was always worth a try.

“Good morning,” Bumblebee offered a faint smile down to the mech as he watched Knock Out’s red optics flicker open and on.

Knock Out instantly perked a brow, his gaze shifting up and down Bumblebee’s form in a way that Bumblebee had seen Ratchet do a million times to assess his frame for injuries. Once Knock Out’s apparent evaluation was complete however, he narrowed his optics back up to Bumblebee’s faceplates and raised his servo to point a sharp finger. “Ohh no. I’m not falling for _this_ again.”

“C’mon, Knock Out,” Bumblebee chuckled at the look Knock Out was giving him. “Come walk with me.”

“No,” Knock Out let his arm drop back to the slab as he turned his head away from the hall where Bumblebee stood so he no longer had to face him.

“’No’?” Bumblebee had thought Knock Out was joking, but now it seemed the mech truly did not want to leave his cell. He thought Knock Out would be jumping to get out of there, just like last time, but apparently things had changed. “Why not?”

“Because every time I get within five meters of you, something _bad_ happens, or Ratchet _yells_ at me, so _no_ ,” Knock Out said, though he did finally turn his head to face Bumblebee again. “Does he even know you’re down here?”

“He told me to walk a few laps around the ship and see how I felt,” Bumblebee crossed his servos. “He didn’t say I had to do it alone.”

“I’m staying _right_ here,” Knock Out tapped the slab with his finger, still not having bothered to so much as sit up, lest Bumblebee not take his words seriously that he was not going anywhere. “If I go with you, he’ll find out later and get mad at me just for being _around_ you.”

Bumblebee rolled his optics to that. “He just gets a little…overprotective, sometimes. That’s just the way he is. I’m sorry he’s been giving you a hard time. I can tell him to back off if—”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Knock Out quickly replied, “you’ll only make it worse.”

“Alright,” Bumblebee raised both hands, seeing that this was getting him the opposite of the decent conversation he desired. “Then how about we make Ratchet aware of our intentions right from the get-go this time? We’ll stop by the medbay first and tell him where we’re going.”

“Where _are_ you going?” Knock Out said as he eyed him once more.

“To shuttle bay four, it has the best view of the city. Come on,” Bumblebee smiled again as he took a few steps back from the cell, “you could probably use the exercise, too.”

Knock Out eyed him for a few more silent seconds before he vented a sigh and pushed himself up to sit and then stand from the slab, and Bumblebee could not help but notice the way the other bot cringed and limped his first few steps out of the cell into the hallway.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you’d hurt your leg,” Bumblebee frowned upon seeing Knock Out limp as he walked beside him, concern instantly emanating from his EM field. “Are you okay? Are you sure you can do this?” Maybe this was why Knock Out had been reluctant to leave in the first place? And here Bumblebee had been trying to convince him otherwise, now he felt like slag for doing so.

Knock Out rolled his optics, _so_ not wanting to explain the residual pain in his aft cheek. “I didn’t…It’s fine,” he quickly raised his hand. “I can walk. Walking helps. Honestly, I’m surprised to see _you_ up. You bounced back quickly.”

“True,” Bumblebee shrugged, “but it’s a lot easier when you have good Medics looking after you.”

Knock Out said nothing in response to that, and the two bots walked the halls in silence before stepping into the lift. Although Bumblebee enjoyed conversing with almost anyone, due to so many years without a vocalizer he also had a propensity to facilitate long, awkward silences, though they never felt awkward to him.

That silence, completely casual to Bumblebee, but entirely nerve-wracking to Knock Out, stayed with them until they reached the medbay entrance. Bumblebee saw the way Knock Out hesitated at the top of the ramp and how he made sure to stay behind Bumblebee and off to the side. Primus, was he afraid of Ratchet now?

“Ratchet?” Bumblebee took two steps down the ramp, eyeing the large room before he spotted the Medic at one of the counters.

“Yes? What is it?” Ratchet said as he glanced up from his work, raising a brow in question.

“We’re going for a walk to shuttle bay four. Is that alright?” Bumblebee’s many years around Ratchet had taught him that asking the bot for permission, even when unwarranted, usually produced a positive response from the mech.

Ratchet’s gaze shifted from Bumblebee to Knock Out, who he noted was already looking guilty, though for what, he was uncertain. “Why are you going to the shuttle bay?”

“To look at the view from the dock,” Bumblebee said simply, and Ratchet’s analytical gaze of him and Knock Out did not go unnoticed.

Ratchet shifted his optics from one bot to the other a few more times before he turned back to his work. “Fine.”

“Thanks,” Bumblebee said with a smile, having already known the answer to the question, then he turned and started down the hallway once more. He gave Knock Out a sly grin, like they had just gotten away with something.

Knock Out caught the grin from Bumblebee as they walked though he did not return it, instead he gave a quick glance back towards the medbay opening, half-expecting Ratchet to be trailing behind them to chaperone. “That was impressive.”

“I’ve had years of practice,” said Bumblebee as he eyed the vast, arching hallway before them. “It’s still so weird to be here, to call this ship ‘home’,” he said, and then laughed at his own words, like he had forgotten who he was talking to. “That probably seems silly to you.”

“Yes, well,” Knock Out began, though he paused as they walked right past the door to Knock Out’s personal quarters. Knock Out immediately noticed small circular light on the panel beside the door frame switch from red to green as the proximity sensors recognized his presence nearby, ready to let him in if he stepped to the door. Knock Out casually moved to the opposite side of the hallway, as far away from the door as he could get. Bumblebee was oblivious to it all. “…well, it sounds like they’ve a good start on rebuilding some of the habitation complexes outside, so maybe you’ll be able to populate those soon.”

“Nah, we’ll let the newcomers take those. I don’t _mind_ being on the Nemesis, it’s just...different,” Bumblebee shrugged.

“Things are definitely _different_ , yes,” Knock Out replied with a hint of sarcasm in his vocalizer.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” noting Knock Out’s sarcasm, Bumblebee was quick to try and ease that cynicism. “None of all of _this_ ,” Bumblebee gestured between their two frames with a hand, “is your fault. It was just bad luck,” he shook his head as they turned a corner. “Bad luck and bad driving, on my part,” he rolled his optics at himself there.

“I know that,” Knock Out said, though he kept his gaze on the floor and looked as guilty as he sounded.

“Then why do you feel _so_ guilty?” Bumblebee watched Knock Out as they walked. “It’s all over your signature, Knock Out, I can sense it. It’s okay, _really_. It was _my_ fault. The whole trip was _my_ idea. If I hadn’t fallen off the edge—”

“It was _my_ idea to race,” Knock Out said as he recalled his conversation on the very same subject between himself and Ratchet, though suddenly he recalled those exact words for a second time, and he quickly looked to Bumblebee at that realization.

Bumblebee smiled to Knock Out, as though he could read his mind. “We’ve had this conversation before,” Bumblebee began, daring to try and use this as an opening to glean some more information. “Do you remember?”

Knock Out quickly tore his gaze away from Bumblebee’s, though he did nod in the affirmative as they stepped into the shuttle bay. Bumblebee moved to the control panel and tapped at the screen to initiate the opening of the dock door. He could feel the apprehension pulsing from Knock Out’s EM field as the other bot stood not too far behind him, but as much as he hated to make Knock Out uncomfortable, Bumblebee was not going to let up, not yet. He walked from the control panel to the now open door, surveying the horizon; the city of Iacon could be seen not too far off in the distance.

“Look,” Bumblebee began once Knock Out had moved to the edge of the dock as well, though he stood well out of arm’s length from Bumblebee, and Bumblebee could tell he was now reigning in his EM field on purpose, “…look, I know you don’t want to have this conversation with me. I know this makes you uncomfortable, but you’re the only bot I can talk to about this. You _know_ I can’t talk to Ratchet, he would never believe me.”

_That_ at least got Knock Out looking to him again, and Bumblebee saw a flicker of understanding there.

“So,” Bumblebee continued, “what do you make of it all?”

Knock Out narrowed his optics. “’Come walk with me’, he says. You had this whole thing planned out all along, didn’t you?”

Bumblebee smirked as he replied. “Maybe.”

With a sigh, Knock Out rubbed at his forehead with his hand, shuttering his optics for a moment. “I don’t know what to think. I mean…we were dead, and now we’re alive again. Isn’t that enough?”

“Yeah, but…Optimus…I think that was real. No,” Bumblebee shook his head and quickly corrected himself, “I _know_ it was real. We both saw him, we were both there on the bridge, and he gave both of us that…that light,” he watched Knock Out now as he spoke, “He gave us light from his own spark. Is that… what you experienced, too?”

Knock Out vented a sigh again, his hand still covering his optics, like he did not want to look Bumblebee in the eye while they were discussing this. “Yes,” he relented, “yes, that’s what I saw. That’s what happened…if it even really _happened_ at all.” In his mind, he was trying to find a rational, medical reason for what they had both seen, though he could not come up with much. He dropped his hand back to his side to eye Bumblebee once more. “I did….notice one thing. It’s probably meaningless but…our sparks…they’re running on the same frequency, they have the same pulse. I saw it on the vitals monitors when we were both hooked up to them in the medbay.”

Bumblebee raised a brow to that as he moved, slowly, to sit down on the edge of the dock. He went still for a moment, gripping the edges of the dock with both hands as a dull and now all-too-familiar pain throbbed inside his gut from the simple act of sitting down. Ratchet had said it would dissipate with time, but that did not ease the pain any less. “What does that mean?” he said while struggling to hide his pain, which he quickly noted Knock Out instantly picked up on.

“Are you alright?” Knock Out hesitated for only a second before he couldn’t help but move to Bumblebee and crouch down beside him, bracing himself up with his hand on the floor as he eyed the patch that covered Bumblebee’s lower torso. “Maybe we should go back.”

“I’m fine,” Bumblebee raised his palm to Knock Out, “Really, it’s okay. Ratchet says it’ll go away soon,” though he noticed how Knock Out’s gaze narrowed at the mention of the older Medic and looked ultimately unconvinced. “What does that mean?” Bumblebee repeated as he watched Knock Out shift to sit down on the dock beside him with a slight wince of his own. “What does it mean if our sparks have the same frequency and pulse?”

“It doesn’t necessary mean anything,” Knock Out eyed Bumblebee warily still, like he expected the bot to pass out at any moment. “There are plenty of bots whose sparks run on the same frequency. In cold-constructed bots, when a split spark anomaly occurs, they will both run on the same frequency and pulse. Amica and Conjux Endura’s sparks have been known to shift to the same frequency and pulse. Two complete strangers might randomly run on the same frequency and pulse. You and I might just simply have the same frequency and pulse,” he shrugged to Bumblebee. “It was merely something I noticed.” And now he wondered if he should have mentioned it at all. He did not want to give Bumblebee some sort of false hope for…. _whatever_ it was the mech was trying to read into all of this.

“Okay,” Bumblebee nodded, taking all of that in before he eyed Knock Out again, “but…have you ever heard of a case of two bots with the same frequency and pulse involuntarily opening their spark chambers to one another?”

Knock Out quickly put his hand to his chest, like he was guarding it from an incoming assault. “No,” his optics narrowed just a tad at Bumblebee, “no, I don’t know what that was. Maybe our plating was just loose after the rocket detonated.”

“I think what Optimus gave us from his _own spark_ has something to do with it,” Bumblebee countered.

“ _I_ think we shouldn’t _speculate_ on things that might just be coincidental,” Knock Out glared in return.

Bumblebee sighed, trying not to get frustrated by Knock Out’s unwillingness to delve deeper into their situation. He changed his tactic then. The mystery of what Prime intended would have to wait. “What about…afterward? After you took the light from his hand, did you…. _see_ anything?”

Knock Out glanced away at that, unconsciously leaning away from Bumblebee, as though their physical separation made all the difference when he replied. He did not want to admit it. He did not want to recall the memory, but he found himself doing so regardless. “Yes, I did.”

Bumblebee blinked as Knock Out leaned away, not understanding his hesitation. “Do you wanna tell me about it?”

Knock Out did _not_ want to tell Bumblebee about it. He was, in fact, vehemently against the idea, but suddenly he found himself telling the story anyway, the words dropping from his vocalizer as though he had no control over what he was saying. “I was you,” he began, still looking away, so that he did not have to see Bumblebee’s faceplates when he spoke. “I was you, and I was in a big room…There was an Autobot brand painted on the floor,” Knock Out focused his gaze on the ground below their peds that hung over the edge of the dock as the memory rose up from his data banks. “I was playing lob ball with Bulkhead…And then suddenly _Megatron_ was in my head, telling me to do things…He was in my head and he was instructing me on how to obtain the Dark Energon shard from a site of some battle with Terrorcons,” Knock Out placed his hand over his optics again, like recalling the memory caused him actual, physical pain. “He threatened to _kill_ the other bots if I didn’t do as he said…I tried to stop him, but…I couldn’t. His mind was too strong. And then he showed me pictures of the Simanzi Massacre all night,” here Knock Out paused to lower his hand from his optics and finally dare to look back to Bumblebee. “ _All_ night…And the next morning Ratchet tried to help me, but Megatron had completely taken over, and he…we...Bridged to the location of the Terrorcon battle and got the Dark Energon shard and then returned here,” he tapped the dock with the pointy tip of his finger, “to the Nemesis, to put the shard back into Megatron’s body, and I…”

Knock Out paused once more, going suddenly silent for so long that Bumblebee almost said something. Bumblebee searched with his own EM field and found Knock Out’s. Though it was still being held close to Knock Out’s frame, Bumblebee was still able to pick up on a sudden sadness there, the type of which Bumblebee himself was all too familiar with.

“The _human_ was there,” Knock Out continued, though not want to admit to anything he was saying. He simultaneously felt compelled to tell Bumblebee everything and at the same time flee the shuttle bay, make a break for Iacon and hope Bumblebee was still too weak to catch up with him. He kept his optics locked on the ground below their peds and the ship’s dock. “The little human was there and I hurt him. I felt so horrible that I’d hurt him.” Knock Out put his hand to his chest plate as he swore he could feel the pain of it all in his very spark, which still confused the hell out of him. There had been a time, many years ago, when Knock Out liked humans, when he enjoyed being around them and learning about their culture and customs, their history and their media and their love of vehicles and speed and their relentless desire to go _fast_. And then MECH happened. _Silas_ happened.

And that was the end of that.

Bumblebee watched Knock Out struggle to say aloud what Bumblebee himself had felt that day. He was fully aware of Knock Out’s great dislike of humans, so to see the mech becoming so visibly upset over something that he had not experienced himself (Or had he? Did this “vision” _count_ as a first-hand experience?), over harming a mere human, startled Bumblebee. It was like watching Megatron be kind, though perhaps not _as_ shocking as that. Bumblebee knew there were vast differences between Megatron and Knock Out, and here now was proof of one of them.

“That was Rafael,” Bumblebee said, now shuttering his optics as that same, familiar guilt crept up from his memory banks. “The little human was Rafael.”

“That all really happened, then?” Knock Out shifted his gaze to Bumblebee again, giving the other mech a look like he was horrified. “That’s what happened to you the day Megatron came back online? Megatron really showed you all of those things? He forced you to put your own weapons to your head and…he dared you to…?” Knock Out had not mentioned to Bumblebee the part of the vision where he had stood in front of the mirror in the habsuite, and he hesitated to say it out loud, though if the vision had been a glimpse into actual reality, into the actual past, Bumblebee would know what he was talking about.

Bumblebee raised the shutters on his blue optics then, staring straight back into Knock Out’s reds as he finished his sentence for him. “Kill him and myself to end the war, yes.”

“Primus,” Knock Out stared back, though only for a moment before he shifted his wide optics to the dock between them. “I didn’t realize he’d gotten into your mind…like _that._ It must have been _terrifying_ for you,” he said as he shivered as the recall of having Megatron control his frame and his actions and his very _mind_. “It was terrifying for _me_ and I only saw it…second-hand or…or _whatever_ it was.”

Bumblebee continued to stare after Knock Out, raising a brow at his words. That Knock Out was able to identify with another bot’s pain, that he was able to put himself in another bot’s peds and acknowledge another’s suffering, that was _hug_ e. Bumblebee had been so hesitant and apprehensive over Knock Out’s desire to “join the winning team” because he feared the bot was as deceptive and corrupt as the rest of the ‘Cons. Despite Bumblebee’s genuine wish that it would be no big deal to integrate an ex-‘Con into their ranks, despite his true desire to trust Knock Out and believe that he honestly wanted to become and Autobot, Bumblebee still held reservations about it. Four million years of fighting Decepticons and the anger and fear and mistrust of them could not just disappear because a bot “changed his mind” about which side he was on. But Bumblebee had tried to stay positive, and had hoped that Knock Out was as _unlike_ a Decepticon as Bumblebee wished he was. Here was the proof he had been waiting for.

Bumblebee glanced away for a moment, inwardly pleased that Knock Out was apparently not beyond redemption, but now that Knock Out had been so willing to tell his story about what he had experienced between their death and return, Bumblebee knew it was his turn to share what he had experienced at that same time, and he was instantly apprehensive. He knew fair was only fair, but still.

“It was,” Bumblebee said in response to Knock Out’s previous statement. “It was awful. I still think about it sometimes and...yeah.” But the old fear of that incident was easily drowned out by the nervousness plaguing Bumblebee’s processor over the words he was about to say. He hunched his shoulders, his hands gripping both knee joints as he dared to look to the other mech. “Knock Out, _I_ saw something, too.”

Knock Out instantly glanced up again, locking his optics onto Bumblebee’s with a look on his faceplates that clearly said “Oh God, _what_?”, though he did not speak a word.

“I was here, on the Nemesis, in the medbay,” Bumblebee found he could not hold Knock Out’s gaze with that look he was giving him, and he quickly shifted his focus elsewhere. “Dreadwing came in and said he was looking for Breakdown because Megatron had ordered him to kill Airach—”

“Stop,” Knock Out’s interrupting command to Bumblebee included an EM field filled with so much threatening anger and intimidation it practically bowled Bumblebee over. Knock Out glared at Bumblebee for a moment before he turned his face away and shuttered his optics. He could not believe, of all the Primus-damned moments of his life for Bumblebee to bear witness to, _that_ was what he experienced. “I know where this is going,” Knock Out decided the best course of action, then, was to shut Bumblebee up. “You don’t have to tell me. I know what you saw.”

“Knock Out, I’m _so sorry!”_ Bumblebee looked back to Knock Out despite his previous apprehension, trying his best to convey through his words and EM field that his apology and sorrow for the situation were genuine. “I’m sorry you lost him! I’m sorry I saw it! I didn’t know that you—”

“I said ‘ _Stop’_!” Knock Out growled through clenched denta plates as he opened his optics and gave Bumblebee the most menacing look the Autobot had seen from him yet. Bumblebee watched Knock Out’s frame tense up, his remaining armor plating slowly rising off his frame to convey his agitation as his pointy fingers dug into the dock’s metal plating. If Bumblebee didn’t know better, he’d say Knock Out was about to attack him.

What was it that Bumblebee had just been thinking about how Knock Out had shown himself to be trustworthy, to be unlike other Decepticons? _That_ Knock Out was completely gone. The Knock Out before Bumblebee now was seething with a barely-controlled rage and blatantly assessing Bumblebee’s frame not to analyze his present injuries, but to calculate where it was best to strike him to cause the greatest amount of damage. Bumblebee knew that look, he’d seen it on the faceplates of thousands of Decepticons right before they went in for the kill, and he was startled by the quickness with which Knock Out’s demeanor flipped from apparently feeling so guilty over a mere vision of harming a human child he hardly knew to initiating attack mode. Even his HUD was flashing warning signs.

Bumblebee quickly weighed his options, remaining completely still as he finally caught Knock Out’s narrowed gaze and held it with his own. In his current state, Bumblebee knew he was the weaker of the two, but he had the advantage of working weapons, both servos, and he could activate Knock Out’s I/D Chip with a few taps of a button, if he had to, yet he did not want to have to resort to any of that. Additionally, he was not going to let Knock Out think all the posturing he was doing would cow him into submission. He knew that Knock Out was trying to rope him into a game of intimidation, a perfectly normal and acceptable form of communication among the Decepticons. Bumblebee wondered if Knock Out had attempted this same tactic with Ratchet and failed, hence his apparent nervousness around the Medic now.

_I should have asked Ratchet first_ , Bumblebee thought to himself as he now wondered how this conversation turned into a ridiculous intimidation contest. Dammit, he didn’t want to have fight this bot, but he wouldn’t back down if it came to that.

The same instant that thought ran through his processors however, Bumblebee felt a jolt within his spark, a hiccup in its pulse that was startling enough that it caused him to bring both hands to his chest and gasp.

If Knock Out was going to attack, that would have been his moment, when Bumblebee was forced to drop his guard, but Bumblebee was quick to note how the other mech brought his hand to his own chassis and hitched forward slightly, as though he felt the same sensation.

Knock Out immediately tore his gaze from Bumblebee as he grabbed at his chest plate, his optics wide as he initiated a self-diagnostic to try and determine what he’d just felt, but the quickly-delivered results showed him nothing out of the ordinary. That was not enough to put Knock Out at ease, however. He slowly glanced back to Bumblebee, all traces of his previous anger gone and replaced with a growing fear.

“What in the Pit was that?” Knock Out asked softly, his optics still wide.

Bumblebee blinked at the fear and paranoia now emanating from Knock Out’s signature, and he shook his head. “I don’t know…I don’t know, but I felt it, too.”

Suddenly Knock Out turned his gaze upwards and then all around the shuttle bay as though searching for something, causing Bumblebee to raise a brow and glance briefly upward himself. Did he see something? Had he heard something?

“What?” Bumblebee blinked back to Knock Out. “What is it?”

Knock Out turned his head back toward Bumblebee, appearing to be on the verge of saying something, but he was clearly having second thoughts. Then just as quickly, he looked away again, his one hand still gripping his chest plate, and Bumblebee wondered if he was even aware that his sharp fingers were creating little lines along his already dull finish. “Nothing.”

“Come on,” Bumblebee’s shoulders and doorwings slumped at Knock Out’s attempt to brush everything off. He did not roll his optics, but he certainly wanted to. He considered himself a pretty patient mech, but even he could not stand when a bot would rather lie than speak their mind when they were clearly bothered. “Don’t give me that. What’s wrong?” Bumblebee did not have to extend his EM field far to pick up on Knock Out’s present signature. “....You’re afraid of something. What are you afraid of?”

Knock Out shook his head, still refusing to look back. “You’ll think I’m being ridiculous.”

“No, I won’t,” Bumblebee began as he still tried to catch the other bot’s gaze. “Knock Out, you can tell me anything, always, and I’m never going to think you’re being ridiculous, or laugh at you, or dismiss what you’re saying, I _promise_ you that.”

Knock Out debated Bumblebee’s words for a solid minute before he finally vented a sigh. What sense was there in holding anything back when Optimus could see it all anyway (Knock Out was _sure_ of it)? “Do you remember…when Prime said that he was always with us?”

Bumblebee lifted a brow to this question as he responded, “Yes.”

“What does that _mean_?” Knock Out finally turned back to Bumblebee as he spoke. “What does that mean to _you_?”

“To _me_?” Bumblebee said, blinking as he mulled that question over for several seconds before forming his response. “To _me_ it means that…well, that he’s always here,” he said as he held a hand to his chest plates, “Y’know? It’s all in there. The type of mech he was, his influence, everything he taught me: How to be kind and understanding, how to lead. To me it means all of that is _here_ , in me, I just have to look for it and remember that it’s there,” Bumblebee canted his head to one side then, eyeing Knock Out. “What does it mean to _you_?”

Knock Out pulled is gaze from Bumblebee again as he eyed the dock’s surface between them. “To _me_ it means…that he’s watching my _every_ move now…That he’s _out_ there, _wherever_ he is,” Knock Out said, flicking his gaze to Bumblebee again, “ _judging_ me and…and _criticizing_ me and just _waiting_ for me to frag all of this up. He gave me a second chance, and I’ll frag it up, he _knows_ it,” Knock Out brought his hand to his helm, eyeing the dock again. “Primus, I already have.”

“He wouldn’t, Knock Out,” Bumblebee tried to sound as reassuring as the EM field he was projecting, “he would never do _any_ of those things. He wasn’t like that. And no, you haven’t fragged it up.”

“Oh, no?” Knock Out glared back to Bumblebee again.  “Because all those things you said it means to _you_? I wasn’t _around_ when he taught all those things. I’m not _like_ the rest of you. I’m the Decepticon _traitor_ in your ranks that joined _too late_ in the war that _nobody_ trusts, so of _course_ he’s going to keep an optic on me.”

“I can see why you’d think that,” Bumblebee said as he set one hand on the dock between them, not returning Knock Out’s glare but instead trying to give the honest impression that he understood where the other mech was coming from. “I can see how this whole… _situation_ would be terrifying for you. But he’s not like that, Knock Out, you have to believe me. He was _never_ like that. You’re really brave, y’know,” he once again tried to catch Knock Out’s gaze. “You stood up to Starscream and you saved us from him and you defected to our side at the _exact_ moment it was probably the _most_ dangerous to do that, but you did it anyway, because you knew it was the right thing to do, didn’t you? _That’s_ what I think Optimus sees. _That’s_ why I think he knows you’re worth a second chance,” here Bumblebee paused when Knock Out finally looked back to him, and he offered a small smile. “You _are_ worth it, Knock Out. Don’t you think so?”

Knock Out stared at Bumblebee for several seconds before quickly looking away again, his hand once again on his helm as he shuttered his optics. The positivity and the reassurance and concern pouring from Bumblebee were all threatening to snap Knock Out’s spark in two, and he just could _not_ allow for that to happen. They would kill him. They would see it as a weakness, and they would kill him. Who the hell even _talked_ like that? Not Decepticons, that’s for sure. “You’re too much,” Knock Out said as he shook his head and once again concentrated on separating the emotions from the facts and allowed the latter to enter his processor while saving the rest for a later time. “You _fragging Autobots_ , you’re too much.”

“I know that it’s hard to talk about certain things,” Bumblebee did not enjoy watching Knock Out struggle through the topics of their conversation, but he was not going to simply dismiss Knock Out’s earlier attempt to intimidate him when things got apparently too difficult to process. “What you told me a few minutes ago about what you saw, about Megatron and Raf? That was hard for me to hear. It was hard for me to sit here and listen to that memory being told by someone else as though they themselves went through the same thing,” Bumblebee narrowed his optics a bit as he spoke. He was not angry, yet, but what he was saying was still hard to admit.

Still, if he could not state his feelings aloud himself, Bumblebee knew he was hardly in the place to ask another bot to do the same. “It’s hard because that entire experience for me was horrific and _embarrassing_ and it made me feel like slag. It _still_ makes me feel like slag,” he continued. “How could I be so _weak_ that I couldn’t protect my own bots? How could I hurt someone I care _so much_ for? And you saw _all_ of that. And you apparently _felt all_ of that. And I suppose I could _hate_ you for that, and hold it against you as though it were somehow _your_ fault.” Pausing for a moment, Bumblebee took a moment to inhale and exhale a vent, because for as hard as he was trying not to get upset, the anger _was_ there, anger at Megatron, anger at himself for all of the reasons he had just said out loud, anger at Knock Out for having seen it all. But he didn’t shove all those feelings and emotions aside to be dealt with later, he let them enter his processor freely, even if it took him a few extra nano-klicks to sort it all out, even if it made him appear to be visibly upset, for what did _he_ care what Knock Out thought of him at that very moment? Part of him expected the ex-‘Con to start laughing, hell, that’s what Starscream would have done if it was him sitting there instead of Knock Out. But when Knock Out did finally look back to Bumblebee, he certainly was not laughing.

“I know,” Bumblebee sighed as he continued, finally calming his circuits a bit, “that you have nothing to do with what you saw. And I _don’t_ hate you for it. But I saw what happened to _you_ the day Breakdown was deactivated by Airachnid,” Bumblebee said, going back to what he had intended to say all along, before Knock Out interrupted him. “I saw the discussion before he left and I saw you cry and felt your spark _break_ when he died. And I saw how Megatron picked you up and promised you revenge and how he…how he was _kind_ to you,” Bumblebee tried to keep the surprise from his vocalizer at that, but he couldn’t. “And how he _cared_ , and how much that meant to you…And I don’t exactly _understand it_ myself, but I felt all of that, Knock Out. I _saw_ it happen and I _felt_ it, the _same way_ you saw and felt what you did about me. That’s not something we should hold against each other. If anything, it means we’re that much more alike, doesn’t it? We saw those things about each other, we were forced to share those experiences…What if it was meant to bring us closer together? To realize that we’re not so different after all?” Bumblebee was still watching Knock Out, but the ex-‘Con had looked away again the second Bumblebee mentioned Breakdown.

Knock Out’s head was starting to hurt. He had his optics shuttered tight, his shoulders hunched as he rubbed his fingers and thumb against the grooves between the fins of his helm. He heard everything Bumblebee said but was at the same time trying desperately to process it all without _really_ processing it all, and it was giving him a headache. _Focus on the facts and set the feelings aside_. “That’s why you were calling his designation,” Knock Out finally said, though he did not look back to Bumblebee.

“What?” Bumblebee blinked, unable to recall those first few cycles in the medbay.

“You were calling Breakdown’s designation…in your sleep, when you were powered down,” Knock Out replied. His tone was not accusatory, he was merely stating a fact. “I heard you say it.”

Bumblebee’s optics went wide. He had no recollection that at all. Now he felt like slag, as though he hadn’t already. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

“You don’t have to be sorry, you couldn’t help it. I know you couldn’t help it,” Knock Out quickly said as he continued to rub at his helm. He did not want to think about what it meant to have been forced to share such privately intimate moments between the two of them. He agreed that it certainly brought them closer together, but only in that now they each had something they could hang over the other’s head, if need be. Maybe that’s why they each saw what they did, so that neither of them could screw the other over, knowing each carried that knowledge about the other? There was some comfort in that, Knock Out supposed, though he would have much rather neither of them had seen anything to begin with.

The sudden screech of an alarm blasting from the speakers placed at the corners of the shuttle bay near the ceiling had both bots nearly jumping from their sitting positions as they turned their gazes upward at the direction of the sound.

“What is that?” Bumblebee raised his hands to cover his audials, but paused so that he could hear Knock Out’s response.

“It’s the Atmospheric Discontinuity Alarm,” said Knock Out, before he glanced back to Bumblebee. “There must be another ship nearby.”

Bumblebee blinked to that, about to say something before Ratchet’s voice suddenly rattled inside his internal audio feed.

“Bumblebee, if you two are still in shuttle bay four, I need you back in the medbay. _Now_ , please.”

Huffing a sigh, Bumblebee shuttered his optics for a moment. He knew this was Ratchet trying to keep him from whatever was about to come out of that ship when it landed. He supposed he ought to be grateful for that, but it still felt slightly demeaning, as though he were some Childe that needed protecting. Arguing with Ratchet would only make things worse however, Bumblebee knew that.

“Alright, Ratchet, we’re on our way,” Bumblebee said as he touched a finger to the side of his helm, then lowered it again when he looked back to Knock Out. “Ratchet wants us back inside.”

“Fine by me,” Knock Out had no desire to greet or even see who was aboard the incoming ship. If it was Autobots, they would hate him. If it was Decepticons, they would try to kill him once they learned of his defection to the other side. Since Pharma’s arrival, Knock Out was quickly learning that he was much safer inside of his cell in the brig than outside of it. He pulled his peds to the dock and pushed himself to stand, cringing at the twinge of pain in his thigh. “Fragging Pharma, I _swear_ to Primus…” he muttered, thankful the noise of the alarm drowned out his words.

Bumblebee had his own struggle to stand, as his every attempt to find the right position to push himself back to his peds was causing serious pain in his gut. He momentarily contemplated lowering himself to the ground below the dock instead and walking up the ramp, but then blinked at the pointy-fingered hand that was being offered down to him. He grabbed onto it with both hands without a second thought.

“Just don’t pull it off, I only have the one,” said Knock Out, wincing slightly as he tugged Bumblebee back to his peds, but for the three nano-klicks their hands were locked together, Knock Out felt that annoyingly seductive sense of calm wash over him again. It was the exact same feeling he’d had when he was standing beside Bumblebee’s slab in the medbay cycles ago.

“Thanks,” Bumblebee said with a hint of embarrassment in his tone, then he blinked at the quickness with which Knock Out ripped his hand free from Bumblebee’s grasp the moment he was back on his peds. Primus, what _now!?_ Bumblebee could not help but narrow his gaze as he caught the tail end of Knock Out’s signature, now pulsing with annoyance. In all his years, Bumblebee had never met a bot whose emotions swung so wildly from one to the next in a matter of seconds.

“Get it in gear, Bumblebee,” Knock Out called back as he started towards the corridor, ignoring the confusion Bumblebee’s EM field was projecting his way, “I don’t want Ratchet blaming me if we take too long to get back, and you _know_ he will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	20. A Concession

The second ship to land brought another three Autobots with their three additional sets of hands and expertise to assist with the rebuilding of Cybertron. Suddenly the idea of having a functioning habitation complex was not so inconceivable after all. Suddenly repairing the other satellites was an achievable goal. The small group of Autobots expanded on their plans, with the new intent to turn the Nemesis into an immobile base of operations until a more suitable structure could be built. With each passing cycle, another ship’s hailing frequency reached the comm station with the confirmation that they too were on their way home. Reconstruction, it seemed, was finally becoming a reality.

 

Knock Out stood before Ratchet in the medbay as he handed over the data pad. It had taken him another three full cycles to pour over every map and mark every location that he managed to dredge up from his databanks. It was more time than he would have liked to spend on the project, and his notes ended up being perhaps a tad more detailed than he had originally planned, but he’d wanted to list as much information as possible. He was going to make damn sure that no one was going to be able to say he hadn’t done his best to assist the Autobots in the early stages of rebuilding Cybertron, _no one_.

“I’ve marked everything I can remember,” Knock Out said as he set the data pad into Ratchet’s hands.

Ratchet took the data pad and began to scroll through the screens, pausing occasionally to raise a brow at a few of the locations and notations. “Nice disclaimer,” he mumbled sarcastically, and at Ratchet’s side First Aid peered at the screen as well, his optics going wide.

“ _Three_ Cryogenic Regeneration chambers!?” First Aid gasped before he looked back to Knock Out, who had taken a lean back against one of the counters.

“Yup,” Knock Out could not help the smug little grin of satisfaction that crept up on his faceplates at the excitement in First Aid’s vocalizations. “Which map are you looking at? There’s five more at the laboratory near the Manganese Mountains.”

“And they _work_?”

“Well,” Knock Out shrugged, glancing down as he ran his fingers along the underside of the counter until they touched upon a keypad. Without needing to look at the buttons, he entered in a numeric code, causing a shallow drawer to release and slide outward from the countertop. “As I noted there, I haven’t been to several of those locations in a while, some of them more than a hundred years ago, but I figured it’s certainly worth a look,” as Knock Out spoke, he pulled the drawer further from its hiding spot, producing from it a wicked-looking serrated dagger, which he casually set on the counter beside him before he turned and moved to the reboot coil station.

“Um,” said First Aid, watching Knock Out with growing concern as the mech crouched down to open the front panel of the machine, reached his arm inside it, and withdrew a laser pistol. “Ratchet?” First Aid frantically tapped the Medic on the servo with one of his fingers, staring as Knock Out placed the firearm on the nearest medslab, then reached into the coil station again. “Ratchet?” _*Taptaptaptaptap*_

Engrossed in the topographic depictions of Cybertron and Knock Out’s detailed overlays, it took Ratchet several seconds before he pulled his gaze away from the data pad to blink to First Aid, then over to where the other Medic was pointing, right as Knock Out stood, another laser pistol in hand. “Huh? What the—” Ratchet shoved the data pad into First Aid’s hands and flipped open the panel on his left servo, yelling to Knock Out as he readied his I/DC Code. “You put that down _right_ now, or I swear to Primus I’ll drop you like a bad transmission!”

Knock Out released the pistol onto the medslab and instantly raised his hand, taking one cautions step away from it. “ _Easy! Easy,_ old mech!” he said as he took yet another step backward. “I _told_ you I’d gather all the weapons and supplies hidden on the ship, _didn’t I?_ Don’t you want me to collect the ones in here as well?” His optics flicked from Ratchet’s face to his finger poised and ready to send Knock Out into stasis-lock at the touch of a button.

“Don’t call me ‘old mech’!” Ratchet growled, though once Knock Out explained what he was doing, he seemed less inclined to activate the I/D Chip. He lowered his hand and servo and quickly marched to the medslab, collecting the weapons and offering them back to First Aid, who had moved to grab the dagger off the countertop. “What _else_ are you hiding?”

Keeping his hand raised, Knock Out froze where he was, not wanting to spook Ratchet any further. That was not his intention in doing this, at _all_. A surge of anger welled up inside him that Ratchet still did not trust him, even after Knock Out had made his intentions so obvious, even after he had _clearly_ stated that he planned to empty all the secret caches on the Nemesis that he knew of. But Prime was watching, Knock Out knew it. Prime was watching, and Prime would want him to be patient, he knew that too, so he took a deep, inward vent, and tried his best not to scowl as he spoke.

“There are fifteen more hidden compartments in this medbay,” Knock Out said slowly, still not moving as he held Ratchet’s gaze. “All of them contain weapons. I’m going to open each compartment, and I’m going to take the weapons out, and I’m going to place them on the nearest hard surface. _Or_ ,” he pointed a sharp finger to Ratchet, “I can place them directly into _your_ hands, if you like. You tell me. _You’re_ in charge, here.”

Ratchet narrowed his optics to Knock Out, contemplating his words for a moment before he replied. “Set them down and then move away from them. First Aid, you’ll collect them once Knock Out’s out of range, won’t you?”

“Yes, Ratchet,” First Aid said, his optics wide as he shifted his gaze back and forth between the pair and trying to keep his wits about him from all of the tension their EM fields were throwing at one another.

Knock Out nodded and then slowly moved to another countertop, making sure all of his actions were deliberate and predictable. He watched Ratchet more than he watched what he was actually doing as he gradually worked his way around the room, pulling weapons from secret stashes within the cabinets, the walls, underneath the metal floor panels, and in one instance, a single vial of liquid metal from _inside_ a microscope. All of this he blatantly set aside before moving away from it, lest he give Ratchet the impression he intended to try anything.

First Aid was diligent in his duty of collecting each armament, so that within the five minutes it took Knock Out to make his rounds, First Aid had amassed a small arsenal on one of the medslabs. Setting his hands on his hips, First Aid blinked at the daggers, the laser pistols, the ion shot gun, the vials of poison, and the carton of Delirium Oxide. “Wow. Just…wow.”

“Unlock these cabinets,” Knock Out said, looking to Ratchet as he moved to the last row of cupboards, those closest to the office at the end of the medbay, and he waved his hand at them. “These four, here…Please,” he made sure to add, when he received skeptical looks from Ratchet and First Aid alike.

Ratchet finally closed the panel on his servo as he walked over to where Knock Out stood, eyeing the cabinets, then the ex-‘Con. “The ones where we store the majority of the pharmaceuticals, you mean?” he said with a tone and glare that suggested he was unwilling to meet Knock Out’s request.

“Yes?” Knock Out raised a brow, unsure why this was suddenly such a big deal.

“Why?”

Knock Out sighed then, rolling his optics. “Oh, for Primus’s _sake_ , Ratchet! I’m not going to try and _take_ anything! Do you want me to show you what’s _really_ in these, or not?”

Ratchet eyed Knock Out for one second before he grumbled, shaking his head as he opened one of his sub spaces and removed a set of electromagnetic keys. He fit one key into the lock of the first cabinet, then another, and another and another, until all four stood open as Knock Out requested.

“No _trust_ around here,” Knock Out muttered as he reached into each cupboard, pressing his fingers against specific spots in a certain sequence along the back panels of each, which caused the false walls to retract and reveal another set of shelves behind them, each containing several vials of drugs.

Ratchet eyed the vials on the secondary shelving, then the pile of weapons on the medslab, then Knock Out. He was not sure whether all of this meant he ought to trust Knock Out more, or less? “What else?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Knock Out raised his hand again. “That’s it, I swear.”

First Aid, too, had been eyeing the weapons and the drugs and the still-open hidden compartments from which Knock Out had pulled all of those things, and he offered the ex-‘Con a genuine smile. “Thank you for sharing this with us, Knock Out.”

There was that phrase again, “Thank you”. Praise and compliments, _that_ was Knock Out’s true drug of choice, one that he could never get enough of. When he had been planning all of this, all of this revelation of secret compartments and hidden cachets, he had told himself he was doing it to secure his place among the Autobots, to attempt to get into their good graces even more than the Vehicons had, but in truth, there was also part of him that was doing it because he knew they would all be pleased with him, and he knew they would tell him as much, as long as he made good on his word.

“All of this has been here the whole time?” First Aid said, blinking again at the stockpile.

“Yes,” Knock Out replied, eyeing the weapons as well before he glanced elsewhere.

“Why so _man_ y, Knock Out?” Ratchet frowned to Knock Out now, catching his gaze when the bot looked back to him. “Weapons in a _medbay_?”

“Take a _wild_ guess,” Knock Out glared to Ratchet once more, unsure why the mech even felt the need to ask such a question. “Dreadwing attempted to _murder_ Starscream once, _in this medbay_ ,” Knock Out continued. “And then Megatron _killed_ Dreadwing for that attempt, _in this medbay_. Just because it’s a _medbay_ doesn’t mean your patients stop being _violent_.”

“Well,” Ratchet crossed his servos over his chest plates, raising both brows as he spoke, “there’s your answer, then. _My_ patients were, _are_ , rarely violent.” And he was not at all surprised to see the look of confusion on Knock Out’s faceplates, as though non-violent patients were a rarity.

“These _are_ weapons, yes,” First Aid said, looking from the pile to Ratchet, “but weapons that Knock Out _didn’t_ use against us, even though he knew they were here.” He felt that should be noted, that Knock Out had _not_ in fact killed them all when he’d knowingly had the chance.

Knock Out blinked to First Aid at that, having not considered the situation _that_ way before, and he felt suddenly compelled to grovel at the small Medic’s peds and question why he was worthy of having such a bot on _his_ side.

“Why hide the drugs?” Ratchet said, startling Knock Out from his reverie.

Eyeing Ratchet and then the cabinets, Knock Out considered his next words carefully before he replied. “To keep bots from stealing them,” he said, which was not a lie, though not entirely the truth, either.

“You didn’t _lock_ the cabinets?” Ratchet countered.

“Of _course_ I did!” Knock Out scowled back to Ratchet, “But Decepticons have very little _respect_ for locks or property that doesn’t belong to them.”

“Uh-huh,” Ratchet mused as he reached into one of the cupboards and removed a vial of liquid from the hidden shelving. He brought the small bottle closer to his optics, reading the label before he looked back to Knock Out. “Are you sure this isn’t your personal stash, Mister ‘Because-I-Have-A-Ridiculously-High-Tolerance-For-Like-Aaallll-The-Pain-Dampeners-And-Sedatives’?” said Ratchet, careful to quote Knock Out’s words exactly.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” Knock Out blinked to Ratchet before setting a glare on the Medic. “What in the Pit is THAT supposed to mean?”

“ _That_ is what you told me when I mentioned I wasn’t sure how you were still conscious after giving you the Lytholine cycles ago,” Ratchet shrugged as he set the vial on the countertop. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

Knock Out scowled, not remembering saying the words, but at the same time he knew in his spark of sparks that Ratchet was no liar. _Stupid, truth-telling Autobots_. “Well,” Knock Out growled, “sedatives like _that_ can make a bot say some pretty _silly_ things.”

First Aid had been quietly watching and listening to the words being thrown back and forth between Ratchet and Knock Out. Up until that point, he had silently been trying to manipulate their Electro-Magnetic fields with his own, sending an innocently imperceptive calming resonance toward both mechs when he felt the anger rising between them. Now, however, at the mention of _silly things_ being said while under the influence, First Aid’s memory instantly jumped to Knock Out telling him how it was okay that he was a virgin, how Knock Out wouldn’t hold that against him, how it didn’t matter, and that he was still, according to Knock Out, the best Medic _ever._ First Aid quit trying to manipulate the two mechs, then. He quit trying to manipulate them, and instead innocently turned his optics away as he silently prayed that this conversation wouldn’t remind Knock Out of all the things he had told First Aid that evening, whether he had sincerely meant them or not.

“Most of these vials are empty,” said Ratchet as he pulled another from the shelves and tilted it back and forth, noting the lack of liquid pooled at the bottom of the glass container. “Care to explain _that_?”

“You _saw_ Starscream’s medical records!” Knock Out said as he gestured to Ratchet with his only hand. “I had to dispense those types of prescriptions to him _frequently!_ There wasn’t always the resources or time to replenish the stocks!”

“That doesn’t explain why the Radilomin First Aid administered to _you_ had _zero_ effect!” Ratchet set the vial down on the countertop beside the other he had placed there, glaring to Knock Out. “That’s a Class A pharmaceutical, you should have been _unconscious_! Explain _that_ to me!”

Glaring, Knock Out considered all the things he _could_ have said in response before he decided he didn’t need to answer the question at all, and merely shrugged, feigning innocence as he looked elsewhere.

“A shrug is _not_ an answer!” Ratchet said, refusing to back down, “And please, when you _do_ answer, go ahead and _lie_ to me, Knock Out,” he made sure to lock optics with the ex-‘Con when he looked back. “Go _right_ ahead!”

Knock Out held Ratchet’s gaze, the two bot’s optics dialed in on one another as they stared each other down in yet another standoff. Knock Out was not sure what fueled Ratchet to continually attempt to belittle and berate him, which pissed him off to no end, but as his databanks had already reminded him before, Prime was watching. God _dammit_ , Prime! How was this even _fair_!? How was it even fair that his _every_ action and word should be judged!? Knock Out put his hand to his helm, wincing as he pressed his fingers and thumb to his temples as he tried to kick the image of Prime from his mind, the image that he felt was _forcing_ him to tell the truth. “Sometimes I had an injection or two,” he found himself admitting.

“Or _five_?” Ratchet countered.

“Yes, or _five!_ ” Knock Out dropped his servo to his side once more and glared to Ratchet. “So _what!?_ So _what_ if I felt like _relaxing_ once in a while!?”

“How often was ‘once in a while’?”

“Whenever I _felt_ like it.”

“Uh-huh,” Ratchet crossed his servos over his chassis again, pleased that he was finally able to call the ex-‘Con out on what he had been expecting all along. “What about high-grade?”

“What _about_ high-grade?”

“I seem to recall First Aid telling me years ago how you drank nothing but high-grade while you were on that ship with him,” Ratchet said, lifting a brow to Knock Out, then to First Aid for confirmation.

“Are you fragging _serious_!?” Knock Out gaped to First Aid, having assumed that such a trivial event that had taken place more than two years ago had _zero_ bearing on his current situation. Apparently not, though. “So _what_!? I wasn’t even _drunk_! I _told_ you I wasn’t drunk, and that was true! Primus, I landed the ship, didn’t I!?” Knock Out gestured to First Aid with his hand, looking for some sort of validation. “I didn’t crash-land us onto the planet or turn us into a fireball when we entered Earth’s atmosphere, _did I!?”_

“And why are you able to consume such _vast_ amounts of high-grade without becoming inebriated?” Ratchet said, drawing Knock Out’s attention away from First Aid, who was now looking guilty, and back to him. “Have you had your FIM (Fuel Intake Moderation) chip reprogrammed?”

“Hah!” Knock Out laughed, “Of _course_ not. FIM chip modification is for little _glitches_ who can’t handle their Engex.”

“I think you have a problem,” said Ratchet with a glare before he turned and began to pull the rest of the vials from the hidden shelving.

“I don’t have a ‘problem’!” Knock Out raised his hand to indicate quote marks with his fingers. “If I _did_ , don’t you think I would have been huddled in a corner shaking like a petro-rabbit from withdrawals the same cycle Bumblebee threw me into that storage bay with the Vehicons?”

Ratchet rolled his optics before taking a side-step to the next cabinet. “Oh please. You and I both know withdrawal symptoms can manifest in ways other than the physical.”

“Ahhh, so you’re calling me _crazy_ now?” Knock Out smirked to that. “How do you know what you see isn’t just my charming personality?”

“The Vehicons have confirmed otherwise,” Ratchet said without turning around.

“Oh, the _Vehicons_ said so. Primus, then it _must_ be true!” Knock Out scoffed, leaning against one of the medlabs, the one without the weapons, he made certain to stay far away from that. “So, you admit you trust their word over mine, then? After all of this?” he gestured to the now-weapons-free medbay and the data pad First Aid had taken up again. “I’m not even _done_ yet! There are more stashes just like these all over the ship.”

“Complete trust isn’t built in a cycle,” said Ratchet as he continued to clear out the shelves, pausing every so often to take a closer look at some of the vials.

“And _you_?” Knock Out glanced back to First Aid, trying to maintain his narrowed gaze, though that was a difficult thing to pull off with the smaller Medic, especially when he had not two minutes earlier been expressing gratitude.

First Aid looked up from the data pad and sighed. “Knock Out, we’re just trying to get a sense of whether or not you –”

“Whether or not I _what_?” Knock Out interrupted him, scowling to Ratchet once more. “ _Yes_ , I did some injecting once in a while, okay? _Yes,_ I hit the high-grade on occasion.”

“The Vehicons said you ‘hit it’ every cycle,” Ratchet said as he shifted the vials on the counter into one collective group with his hands and counted them.

“Big deal.”

“You _know_ none of that is healthy,” First Aid offered.

“Oh, you mean in the same way that injecting _Synth-En_ isn’t healthy?” Knock Out raised a brow to First Aid at that, then gave a pointed look back to Ratchet. The bot was going to stand there and lecture him about the dangers of injecting and high-grade consumption with _that_ sort of history? _I don’t think so._

First Aid couldn’t see Ratchet’s face, as he stood with his back to the other two mechs, but he could certainly feel the wave of and anger and embarrassment rolling off of him and toward the pair. It made First Aid take a small step backward, and he was surprised to find Knock Out casually shifting back and a bit closer to him as well, as though standing beside First Aid was the safest place to be.

Ratchet’s hands were gripping the edges of the countertop so hard that his thumbs were starting to leave little indentations in the metal. He briefly considered taking a swing at Knock Out, just one, just _one_ time, and he quickly recalled how damn good it had felt that one time in the past he _had_ been given the pleasure of punching Knock Out across the faceplates. When Agent Fowler, Jack, Miko, and Rafael had infiltrated the Nemesis to access the ship’s mainframe and download the locations of the Iacon relics discovered by the Dark Energon that gave the ship sentience, Ratchet had been more than thrilled to be the one to Bridge onto the ship at the last moment and save the humans from Knock Out’s wrath by knocking his sensors offline with a fist. It always felt good to be the hero.

Decking Knock Out would not make Ratchet a hero now, though. If anything, it would mean he was stooping to the level of the Decepticons, and he would _never_ fall that low. Ratchet realized he’d been hunching his shoulders, so he slowly let them down again as he sighed, releasing his anger with the vent. “I was wrong to do that,” he said, turning to look back to Knock Out. “It was a stupid thing to do, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

“But you _enjoyed_ it while it lasted, right?” Knock Out said, trying to push Ratchet even harder, because inwardly he was surprised the bot would just freely admit to being wrong.

“Yes, I did,” Ratchet replied while holding Knock Out’s gaze.

“And you _miss_ that feeling, don’t you? And please, _lie_ to me when you answer, Ratchet,” Knock Out said, using the same line that had been used on him, as though he were daring Ratchet to be dishonest.

“Yes, I sometimes miss it,” Ratchet replied, though he shifted his gaze to First Aid then with a barely-perceptible look that suggested he was sorry to admit such a thing.

First Aid sent Ratchet an internal acknowledgement ping, and Ratchet knew that in this context the implied “Understood” had shifted to “I understand.”

“ _Well_ then,” Knock Out scowled when Ratchet did not take any of the bait. He stepped close enough to First Aid that he was able to tap at the screen of the data pad the Medic still held between his hands, and First Aid blinked as Knock Out brought up the blueprints of the Nemesis. He zoomed in on one of the deck levels, then drew a circle around a particular room. “That’s where the last stash of Synth-En is stored,” Knock Out made sure to tip the data pad back against First Aid’s chest plates, so that Ratchet could not see the screen and the circled location, as he smirked back to the older mech. “You’re going to take away _my_ fun fuel? I’m going to take away _yours_.”

“That’s fine,” Ratchet spread his hands apart, smirking as well. “You want to be fair in this? I’ll go ready a FIM chip program for you. Then we can be _total_ equals,” he said as he turned and started toward the opposite side of the medbay.

Knock Out blinked as he watched Ratchet walk off, then he glared and ground his denta plates as he wondered if this had been Ratchet’s intention the entire time, or if Knock Out himself had been too stupid to realize he had given Ratchet the idea by saying too much. _Stupid mech won again_. “Fine!” he yelled back to Ratchet, trying to act nonchalant about the whole thing and failing miserably. “That’s _fine_!”

First Aid had been clutching the data pad to his chest, watching and listening to the two bots sneer and bark back and forth at each other, which was apparently their only method of conversing. It was seeing Knock Out’s hand slowly clench into a fist that finally prompted First Aid to act. Slowly, he set a hand on Knock Out’s servo, knowing it would draw the bot’s attention and act as a harmless distraction.

“Thank you for this,” First Aid said softly once Knock Out had flicked his gaze from Ratchet, to the red fingers on his arm, to First Aid’s face. “Thank you for showing me where it is, and not him.”

Knock Out vented a sigh, reluctantly giving in to First Aid’s comforting signature. He _did_ somehow feel safer beside the bot. “Don’t mention it,” he muttered, his spark flaring briefly at the acknowledgement, though he eyed Ratchet again momentarily before he tilted his head back down to First Aid, and spoke quietly. “There’s one more canister of Synth-En in supply bay one, in the black crate against the wall on the left-hand side. If you’re going to destroy the rest, at least keep _that_ one safe somewhere. You never know when you might need it for something.”

First Aid listened and nodded, finally releasing Knock Out’s arm so that he could bring up the map of the mentioned supply bay on the data pad, though he did not mark the location. “Okay.”

“C’mon then, let’s go,” Ratchet called, and Knock Out glowered as he turned and stalked across the medbay to where Ratchet stood.

Knock Out quickly decided this wasn’t worth his anger; he’d simply reset the chip later, he knew how, _and_ he could do it without tools, if he had to. He sat down on the medslab where Ratchet stood, and went still as the old Medic went about uploading the modification via a cortical line. “What did you program it for?” he asked.

“Anything higher than eighty-seven octane, and Class A and B pharmaceuticals,” said Ratchet as he spread the protoplating at the base of Knock Out’s helm to insert the line there. Once the program was downloaded into his system, the substances Ratchet mentioned would have zero effect, regardless of how much of them Knock Out consumed.

“I don’t see what difference it even _makes_ when I can’t get my hands on any of those things _anyway.”_

“Good, then you can stop complaining about it,” Ratchet replied as he carefully snapped the line into place, then straightened again as he looked across the bay. “First Aid, will you please take all of that into the office?” he gestured to the mini stock-pile of weapons on the middle medslab.

“Of course, Ratchet,” First Aid looked up from the data pad, where he had just erased the location Knock Out had marked with a circle moments ago, after committing it to his memory banks. He set the pad aside and moved to the slab, gathering up as many weapons as he could, though he looked incredibly nervous in doing so, like he had no idea how to handle a single one of them.

“Thank you. And keep your digits off the triggers!” Ratchet yelled as First Aid headed for the back office.

“I _know!”_

“He doesn’t know,” Ratchet quietly muttered to himself as he unconsciously rubbed the fingers of one of his hands with the other when they threatened to stiffen up. He moved away from the slab and to the vitals monitor to access the CMRD and update Knock Out’s data log while the FIM chip program completed uploading. “Listen,” he said as he tapped at the screen, “I’m not going to say I understand what it was like to live on this ship under Megatron’s rule, but I know what these data logs imply. I know it wasn’t _just_ Starscream that legitimately _needed_ those types of dampeners and sedatives on a regular basis. You’ve had the training, you know how easy it is for our systems to become dependent on certain drugs when they’re being administered frequently. I’m _not_ saying that gives you an excuse,” Ratchet paused to glance back to Knock Out, who was not looking at him, though he had clearly heard every word that was said, “ _none_ of us have any excuse, but this outcome is to be expected,” he shrugged. He was trying. Primus dammit, he was _trying_ to relate here. “I understand the temptation, Knock Out.  When you know the effects of the drugs, and they’re right in front of you _constantly_ ….”

Knock Out _was_ listening to Ratchet, though he chose not to respond to what he was hearing. Instead, he changed the subject, as he did so frequently when the topic caused him too much unease. “There’s something else I want to show you,” he said, finally glancing Ratchet’s way. “ _Just_ you. It’s not here, though. It’s on B Deck.”

Ratchet raised a chevron brow to that. He was not surprised by Knock Out’s diversion tactic, but he did not press the matter further, for now. “Why _just_ me, Knock Out?” he asked.

“Because the less bots that know about this, the better.”

Still looking wary, Ratchet glanced to the office across the bay, then back to Knock Out. “Not even First Aid?” he asked, genuinely surprised that the other Medic wasn’t mentioned.

“Not even First Aid,” Knock Out muttered his response, looking disappointed. First Aid would have been his go-to bot for what he planned to reveal, but with Pharma having as much influence over the small Medic as he did, Knock Out was not willing to take the risk. Also, if First Aid could barely handle a simple laser pistol, he definitely would not be able to handle what Knock Out was going to show Ratchet, physically or mentally.

Ratchet was intrigued, as much by the secrecy as he was by Knock Out’s unwillingness to share the information with First Aid. “Alright,” he said before he stepped back to the medslab and unhooked the cortical line from the base of Knock Out’s helm.

Both Knock Out and Ratchet had heard the footfalls of another bot heading down the hallway and toward the medbay entrance, so both had their heads turned to the open doorframe when a decently-sized red and grey mech with wide chest and shoulder plates came into view. The bot wasn’t even as large as Bulkhead or as tall as Ultra Magnus, but the chest-and-shoulder-to-torso ratio made his upper half look gigantic, like he was built to crush frames with his bare hands.

Despite the red and grey palette and glaring Autobot brand on the mech’s impressive chest plates, Knock Out was instantly reminded of Breakdown, and he had to force himself to turn his gaze down and away, lest anyone notice his look of surprise followed by momentary grief.

“Well now,” the red mech’s vocalizer drawled in a low and gravelly tone as he stepped down the ramp, smirking to Ratchet, “ain’t this a sight fer sore optics.”

“Ironhide!” Ratchet’s astonishment was clear on his faceplates before he broke out into a smile, and he started toward the ramp to meet the other mech half way.

“In the metal, heh,” Ironhide said as he set a hand on Ratchet’s comparatively small shoulder plate and gave him a slight shake. “I’ll be damned, lookit you! Four million years an’ we outlasted ‘em all! An’ they say war is a young mech’s game.”

“When did you get in? Did anyone else come with you?”

“Hound an’ I flew in early this mornin’,” Ironhide said as he set his hands on either side of his hip plates, “Set down ‘bout a hundred klicks to the east o’ here, figured we ought to approach with caution by land in case this whole thing was some kind o’ setup. Glad to see our paranoia was unfounded,” he smiled to Ratchet, then glanced past him to where Knock Out still sat on the edge of the medslab. He took one look at the color scheme and the sharp fingers and the lack of an Autobot badge and came to the most logical conclusion. “An’ who’s this pointy fellow? Yer first POW?”

Ratchet cleared his vocalizer, smirking to Ironhide’s assessment, but correcting him just the same. “ _*Ahem*_ This is Knock Out, he’s not—”

“Knock Out?” Ironhide interrupted him as he moved in to get a closer look, causing Knock Out to subtly lean away from the larger bot as he eyed Ironhide warily. “ _Megatron’s_ CMO? Wow, that’s quite a catch! The Bloody Butcher, eh?”

“Ahh, well, _actually,_ Ironhide,” Ratchet started again, this time completing his sentence, “he’s no longer a Decepticon. He defected and has since been assisting us in getting everything back up and running.”

“No kiddin’?” Ironhide made a fist, setting it on one hip again as he peered down at Knock Out. “Hmm, probably has some good intel, doesn’t he?” he said as he smirked back to Ratchet then, and casually moved his fist from his hip to his other hand, popping all the knuckle joints against his wide palm, less than a meter from Knock Out’s face. “You let me know if you need any assistance gettin’ that from ‘im.”

Ratchet rolled his optics, still smiling as he shook his head at Ironhide’s gesture. “That won’t be necessary, Ironhide. He’s already informed us of plenty, _voluntarily_.”

“Really? A ‘Con workin’ fer our side? _Willingly_? Primus, things really _have_ changed!” he blinked to Ratchet, then back to Knock Out. “Well, I suppose if Ratchet’s willin’ ta put in that kind o’ word fer you, you must be alright.”

“ _Ironhide_!?” First Aid’s voice, which sounded oddly high in contrast to Ironhide’s, carried across the medbay from the doorway of the office and caused the broad-shouldered mech to turn and glance in that direction.

“First Aid!” Ironhide said as he was instantly distracted and moved away, unaware of the glare Knock Out was now giving him.

“What a _charming_ character,” said Knock Out as he swiveled his narrowed gaze back to Ratchet.

“Oh, he’s just messing with you, Knock Out,” Ratchet waved him off, suddenly looking to be in a better mood than he had in stellar-cycles.  “He’s harmless unless provoked. Hell, I once saw him drive through an unmarked minefield to save a galacto-cat and her seven kits,” Ratchet rolled his optics at that recall. He collected the cortical line and moved to put it away as he continued to speak. “He was Second in Command of the Cybertronian Civil Militia before the war, and believe it or not, he _didn’t_ get there by crushing skulls,” Ratchet shrugged back to Knock Out. “Honestly, he’s one of the most loyal bots I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

“Civil Militia, huh?” Knock Out raised his hand to rub at the base of his helm where Ratchet had inserted the line, and he stared after Ironhide, his form easily concealing First Aid’s frame from view completely as the smaller mech stood opposite him. “And you trust him?” Knock Out said, glancing back to Ratchet.

“With my life. And it’s not just me that would say that. Optimus says…” Ratchet paused there, his lighter mood faltering a bit, though he carried on, “…He _also_ said that. He _also_ trusted Ironhide, implicitly.”

Knock Out contemplated Ratchet’s words, the hint of sadness pulsing from the Medic’s signature not lost on him. He wondered if Prime himself was not privy to this conversation at that very moment, and he slowly shifted his gaze around; he did not know why he always expected to _see_ Prime there, or whether the feeling of being watched was just his paranoia, or something else. Maybe that feeling actually meant something, though, that it was happening right here, right now.

Knock Out looked up to where Ironhide stood, holding out his massive servos while First Aid stacked the remaining weapons onto them. He could not quite make out what they were saying, but both mechs seemed simply ecstatic to be reunited. Knock Out knew he ought to be happy to see two friends coming back together for the first time in Primus knows how long, but his thoughts were selfishly overwhelmed by the realization that he himself was not likely to experience that feeling probably ever again. Before he could fall too far down into that hole of self-pity, he quickly looked back to Ratchet.

“He should come with us,” Knock Out said, holding Ratchet’s gaze when the other mech turned to look at him. “If you and Optimus trust him that much, Ironhide should see what I want to show you.”

Ratchet was momentarily startled by the conviction with which Knock Out spoke, and he blinked to the other bot as though noticing a new side of him for the first time. “Okay,” he said reassuringly, nodding before he turned away again to lock the drawers before he turned to face the open bay. “Ironhide? Care to take a walk?”

It was then that Knock Out saw it, the second he turned his gaze back to First Aid and Ironhide, he picked up on it instantaneously: That _look_ First Aid was giving Ironhide as he placed the last of the weapons into Ironhide’s grip, and that subtle _grin_ Ironhide was giving in return as he accepted the firearms. Knock Out’s primary programming suddenly kicked on for the first time in years as his HUD filled with the data being delivered to his processors as he watched the pair. Yes, there was _definitely_ something going on there, and Knock Out suddenly recalled that conversation he’d had with First Aid all those years ago, and it made him smirk: _“Come on, Knock Out. Four million years of war, you think Autobots don’t get around? You think we don’t like to toss a few back once in a while and let loose?”_

Knock Out had to cover his faceplates with his hand to try and wipe the smirk off them at this sudden realization that occurred at the exact same moment Ironhide turned to face Ratchet and lift a brow to him.

“Sure, Ratchet. Lemme just set all this in the office,” said Ironhide before he grinned back to First Aid and started toward the named room.

“First Aid,” Ratchet said as he stepped toward the ramp, “the medbay is yours.”

First Aid blinked back to Ratchet, his gaze having been stolen by Ironhide’s departing frame for a moment. “Yes, Sir,” he said quickly, looking startled and guilty at the same time.

Having watched and processed all of that, Knock Out stood from the medslab and started after Ratchet, synthesizing a cough as an excuse to keep his hand over his mouth as he struggled to keep himself from laughing out loud.

Ratchet paused on the ramp, giving Knock Out a look as he spoke, “Don’t tell me you’re coming down with something.”

“* _Ahem!_ * I’m fine, really.”

“Maybe I should increase your dosage of Earth minerals.”

“ _Please_ don’t,” Knock Out said as he dropped his hand back to his side, because Ratchet’s words were no laughing matter. “How about you let me hit the oil bath instead?”

Ratchet rolled his optics before focusing them on Ironhide as he reappeared from the office across the bay. “After the patches come off,” he replied.

“That could be another deca-cycle!” Knock Out lamented.

“It certainly could,” Ratchet shrugged, then offered a smile to Ironhide as the mech met them on the ramp.

Ironhide raised a brow as he glanced between the two, “Where we goin’?”

“Well, that depends,” said Ratchet as he moved into the corridor beyond the medbay, turning to look back to Knock Out as he and Ironhide followed. “Lead the way.”

Knock Out was still glaring at the thought of remaining filthy for the foreseeable future, but he nodded just the same as he stepped past Ratchet and made his way toward the closest lift. He said nothing, as he was all audials, listening to the two Autobots talking behind him.

“It’s a shame about Optimus,” said Ironhide as he again placed a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder, concern and sadness emanating from his EM field. “Magnus told me how everything went down.”

“Hmm, yes,” Ratchet mumbled, his previous smile disappearing completely.

“The mech was a true hero. Honestly, I would expect nothin’ less o’ him,” Ironhide said as he removed his hand and offered a smile. “It was an honor to work alongside him fer as long as Primus allowed it.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Hey! We should build some type o’ memorial. A statue, maybe?” Ironhide mused as Knock Out lead the way into the lift and they rode it down to Deck B. “Naw, what am I sayin’? He would hate that. How about a monument?”

“Hmm,” said Ratchet, who Knock Out noticed was now sullenly staring at his peds.

“I’ll ask Bulkhead to see if him an’ them Vehicons can’t scrounge up some materials. It don’t have to be anythin’ fancy, just a nice plaque or somethin’,” Ironhide had been eyeing the hallways once they left the lift, but when he finally looked back to Ratchet and noticed the bot was mostly unresponsive to his ideas, he offered a sympathetic smile that Ratchet did not see, and changed the subject. “So…Magnus told me Megatron up an’ quit! Said he gave some spiel about oppression an’ the Decepticons bein’ no more an’ then split town.”

“Yes, he did,” Ratchet finally spoke up as they rounded a corner, “whatever _that_ means.”

“Boy, what I woulda paid to see _that_!”

“Yes, it was quite a surprise.”

His head tilted upward, Ironhide eyed the interior of the Nemesis as they walked. “Lookit this place, it’s massive! Hey, an’ Wheeljack said Starscream was all but cryin’ when Megatron took off,” he looked down to Ratchet once more. “Unbelievable,” he said, then raised a brow to Knock Out, who still walked several meters ahead of them. “So, yer the only one who stayed, ‘eh Knock Out?”

Knock Out blinked back to Ironhide at that as he continued to walk, keeping his answers short. “Yes.”

“Now _there’s_ a mech with a pair o’ ball-bearings on ‘im,” Ironhide smirked as he elbowed Ratchet with one of his large servos, causing Ratchet to nearly tumble over. “Megatron an’ all the rest runnin’ off to hide while this bot stays to face the music. _That’s_ somethin’. You’re a braver spark than I, boss,” he said as he looked back to Knock Out, who had come to a stop at the wall panel beside a wide bay door.

Knock Out eyed Ironhide cautiously as the larger mech stood by his side, which was still unsettling despite his previous words of praise. “I very much doubt that,” Knock Out said before he quickly turned to the panel and began to type away at the screen.

Ratchet stepped to the bay door as well, searching the area for any hints as to what might be beyond it. “What is this?” he asked.

“Shockwave’s weapons laboratory,” Knock Out said, giving Ratchet a quick glance that clearly suggested the seriousness of the situation.

“And you have _access_ to it?” Ironhide said as he raised a brow.

“Yes, well,” Knock Out looked back to the screen as he continued to type, “I was forced to assist him in his research,” which was not a lie. Never mind _how_ it had come about that he was forced to be Shockwave’s assistant. “He refused to leave me alone in here without his supervision so…I set up an override access code to this room,” Knock Out said as he shrugged. After a few more taps on the screen, the locks finally hissed as they released, and the wide bay door slowly slid open to the right. Knock Out stepped inside and nodded for the pair to follow before he accessed the wall panel on the inside of the room, shutting and locking the door behind them.

The motion-sensor lights above them slowly ticked on one at a time as Knock Out moved further into the bay, illuminating a large, tidy workspace. Every tool had its place, every ongoing project and experiment its own table, but the walls were what both Ratchet and Ironhide were drawn to as they slowly looked around the room. On every wall hung weapons of every shape, size, and material, rows and rows of them. Firearms, swords and axes, close-range weapons, long-range weapons, and weapons crafted to reflect Earthen and other alien armaments.

Ratchet turned a slow circle from where he stood in the center of the room, his optics wide as he took it all in. “Primus….”

“Holy _Toledo_ ,” said Ironhide, who had spent a decent amount of time on Earth himself and picked up a few American human says along the way. He stood at one of the walls, this one lined with different prototypes of fusion cannons that were clearly designed to be mounted on Megatron’s right servo.

Knock Out shifted his gaze between the two for a moment before he too moved one of the walls, this one less crowded than the others. “There are a lot of bad things in here,” he said, a part of him still wondering if it was the right thing to do, to reveal this place to the Autobots, but he figured that eventually, someday, somehow, they would have gained access to it one way or another. It was better to have these things handed over to sane, rational bots, Knock Out knew this. He just hoped he had picked the right ones. “Things that bots would pay good credits to get their hands on,” he continued, “Things that bots would _kill_ each other over…I trust that you two will keep all of this _out_ of those bot’s hands.” That being said, Knock Out turned back to the wall, to yet another panel integrated there. He tapped at the screen, initiating a vocalizer recognition sequence. “Ruidoso, New Mexico,” he said, with a slightly pained tone, and once his voice and passphrase were analyzed, a panel along the wall unlocked and slid downwards to reveal a shelf containing three canisters.

“We will,” Ratchet said as he looked back to Knock Out, still taken aback by the vast quantity of weaponry. “Thank you, Knock Out. Thank you for showing this to us, I...” he paused, blinking at the hidden shelf and the canisters as he now moved closer to them for a better look, his optics going wide. “Is that….?”

“Gideon’s Glue. Cold Phosphex. Liquid Shrapnel,” said Knock Out, as he pointed to each container in turn. “The last known samples in the galaxy.”

“Oh my God,” Ratchet said as he gaped at them. Each named chemical weapon that Ratchet was now looking at was responsible for killing several thousand a piece, though how the Decepticons had come to possess them was a mystery, for they were all three created by Autobots. Gideon’s Glue, also known as mycopropelene, could literally melt a bot’s armor and protoflesh from their frame. Cold Phosphex, the mechiological weapon that had been Cliffjumper’s claim to fame, could alter the crystalline structure of a bot’s component metals, leaving their frame as brittle as glass, which could then be shattered just as easily. And Liquid Shrapnel, an acid so highly volatile and combustible when exposed to nearly any planet’s atmosphere that it had been given such a name due to its tendency to explode and rend holes through a bot’s armor plating. The creation and use of chemical weapons had always been a hotly-contested issue during the war, their capability for mass destruction on a horrific level quickly deemed unethical, yet it was the Autobots, the honorable, _moral_ Autobots who had manufactured them in the first place.

Ironhide now stepped up beside Ratchet and Knock Out to peer at the canisters, his blue optics going wide as well. “Sweet Solus Prime,” he said as he turned to Ratchet, “I thought the last of these had been destroyed thousands of years ago?”

Knock Out looked between the two other bots as they stood by the wall. “You should… _hide_ these or dispose of them or…or _something_ , before more bots get here,” he looked to Ratchet then with unintentional desperation. “Seriously, Ratchet. You _never know_ what some bots are capable of.”

“Yes, yes you’re absolutely right,” Ratchet blinked as he looked up from the containers and back to Knock Out. “Thank you, I mean it. You’re doing a _good thing_ by showing this to us, understand?” Ratchet made a point of placing a hand on Knock Out’s servo, slowly, as well as extending his EM field to show his gratitude. He did not want the significance of this offering to go unrecognized. “Good job,” he said, making sure to catch and hold Knock Out’s gaze.

“I’ll be damned, Butcher,” Ironhide said as he stared at the three canisters housed within the hidden shelving before he turned to look back to Knock Out, “you weren’t kiddin’!” He gave Knock’s shoulder plates a smack with his hand. “Yer alright. We’ll get this handled quiet-like, understand? Y’did good.”

Knock Out cringed slightly at Ironhide’s rough gesture, though he still managed to nod. He thought he would be basking in the glory of being praised and to _finally_ be in Ratchet’s good graces, but while the brush of Ratchet’s EM field felt wonderful, that feeling was being drowned out by a quickly-growing fear. Everything Knock Out had shown the Autobots thus far was trivial compared to the contents of this one room. This was not the sort of treason that Megatron would have beaten Knock Out over, this was the sort of treason Megatron would have _killed_ him over. This was the sort of treason that got a mech’s name bumped towards the top of the Decepticon Justice Division’s kill list. Knock out offered Ratchet a brief, weak smile before he quickly glanced elsewhere and shifted away from the other two bots, keeping his EM field close so that neither of them would realize how suddenly terrified he’d become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Units of Time:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Groon: 1 hour  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	21. A Request

As the cycles turned, more Autobots, and now even a few Neutrals, continued to heed Bumblebee’s call and return to Cybertron. From the medical supply and metal fabrication stocks on those recently-landed ships, Ratchet was finally able to complete the frame structure for Ultra Magnus’s hand, the poor mech having suffered through the limitations of having just a simple claw for stellar-cycles now.

Ultra Magnus, his right servo laid before him across a medslab, sat on a metal crate so that Ratchet, who sat opposite him on the other side of the slab, had easy access to his wrist joint. He had been watching Ratchet’s work intently, internally anxious that his circuitry might fail to recognize the new frame piece, though on the outside he was his usual, calmly collected self.

“I spoke with Wheeljack this morning,” he said, watching as Ratchet attached small clips to the end of the wrist of the hand frame which still lay, unattached, on the medslab beside Ultra Magnus’s arm. From the clips, wires ran into a small databox that Ratchet began to fiddle with as he ran a few final tests. “He and Caps Lock have made significant improvements to the Spacebridge,” Ultra Magnus continued, “He believes they will have it up and running within the next five cycles.”

“Excellent,” said Ratchet, though Ultra Magnus was not sure if he was reacting to the conversation or to what he was reading from the databox.

“Indeed,” Ultra Magnus responded, and then proceeded to choose his next words carefully.  “Ratchet, despite the incoming ships and supplies onboard the Nemesis, I believe it is in our best interest to send a temporary contingent back to Earth to secure our resources there. I managed to reach Agent Fowler,” he paused when Ratchet blinked up to him as though startled by the news.

“When?”

“Just this morning. You’re the first I’ve told. Bumblebee was still in his quarters after I ended the transmission, I did not want to disturb him,” Ultra Magnus quickly raised his one, large hand. “I was not _purposefully_ keeping the information from him.” The last thing he wanted was to appear to be overthrowing their newly-appointed Commander, especially when he knew where he intended to steer this conversation next.

Ratchet nodded, then looked back to the databox a final time before he removed the clips from the frame, hesitating to ask the first question that popped into his processor, though in the end he did anyway. “Did you tell Fowler about…what happened?”

“I had to, Ratchet,” Ultra Magnus watched the old Medic, who seemed no longer willing to make eye-contact. “The first thing he did was ask for Optimus. I had to tell him. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. He deserves to know,” Ratchet said with a sigh as he set the databox aside and grasped the large frame piece with both hands, turning it wrist-end toward Ultra Magnus. “Okay, let’s see if I did this right the first time, or if it still needs a bit more tweaking. You shouldn’t feel any pain, just a little jolt as the conduits reconfigure themselves.” Ratchet finally looked back up to Ultra Magnus, who gave him a nod, then he carefully inserted the wrist joint into the opening at the end of Ultra Magnus’s arm, giving a final push to lock the ball-and-socket joint back together with a solid _*Clack!*_ of metal on metal.

Ultra Magnus raised his brows at the tingling sensations that were running up and down his entire servo, though within just a few seconds, he dared to send a charge down through his circuitry, and he gave an imperceptible smile as he watched the thick skeletal struts of his new fingers flex inward. “Your work never ceases to amaze, Ratchet,” he said as he flexed his new hand back and forth and the wrist joint.

“Bah,” Ratchet waved the compliment aside, though he smiled as he did so. He let Ultra Magnus get a feel for the new frame for a few more seconds before placing his own hands back onto it. “Now it just needs to sit with the nanites for a cycle and it’ll be complete,” he said as he slipped his fingers under the cuff of Ultra Magnus’s servo to pop the hand frame back out at the joint.

Ultra Magnus gave another nod as he watched Ratchet carry the hand frame toward the side counter, where he carefully set it into an empty tank, and he took this opportunity to continue their previous conversation. “Agent Fowler is of course ready and willing to assist us any way he can,” Ultra Magnus said. “I was thinking perhaps you, First Aid, and Bumblebee could return to Hangar E and see to its decommission?”

Ratchet quickly turned back to Ultra Magnus at that with blinking optics. “ _Me?_ Me _and_ First Aid? _Surely_ you need more Medics around _here_ than on Earth?” he said, then scowled. “I don’t even _like_ Earth!”

Ultra Magnus was quick to raise his one hand again as he spoke. “Pharma seems intent on sticking around, at least for the next few stellar-cycles, and I received an interstellar comm from Fixit late last night, he and three other bots are en route from Spaceport CSSB-16. They should be here by thirty-six-hundred hours tomorrow evening.”

“But we _just_ _got_ here, Magnus!”

“I realize that, but you and First Aid are familiar with the base and our human allies there. I was toying with asking Bulkhead and Wheeljack, but we need them here for our rebuilding efforts,” Ultra Magnus made a point to catch Ratchet’s gaze with his own. “I am not attempting to order you, Ratchet, I am merely asking you if you’re willing.”

Ratchet groaned at the thought of returning to Earth and raised both hands to rub them down his faceplates. What Ultra Magnus was saying did make sense, however. Of _course_ it would be best to send bots who knew the base and the humans there. But why did one of those bots have to be _him?_

“I don’t foresee your stay there lasting for more than a few stellar-cycles. We need to inventory whatever supplies are left, and perhaps collect Energon from a few of the mines the Decepticons abandoned,” Ultra Magnus continued. “If we’re going to be running mining operations, we’ll need to send more bots than just you three, and we’ll need Medics readily available in case we encounter issues inside the mines.  Take some of the Vehicons with you. Bumblebee can command our Earth forces until the mission there is complete, and in the meantime, the rest of us will keep things moving here.”

A vented sigh rattled through Ratchet’s chassis, as he thought of yet again being forced to work within the parameters of Earth’s _very_ primitive technology. Not to mention the humans. He did not _hate_ them, to be sure, but they were not his most favorite alien species to deal with, if he even had a favorite at all. Ratchet gave Ultra Magnus a small glare from where he stood beside the counter. “Bumblebee won’t want to leave here, you know that.”

Ultra Magnus shrugged one towering shoulder pauldron as he responded. “You’re his Medic. Don’t give him a choice.”

“Yes, because every ‘Bot listens to what _I_ have to say and they NEVER go against _my_ orders, do they, Magnus?” Ratchet said with a scowl to the much larger mech opposite him.

Ultra Magnus glanced away for a moment, looking slightly guilty, though he did eventually return his gaze to Ratchet again, guilty or not. “He will listen to you, Ratchet.”

“Uh-huh, just like you do?”

Ultra Magnus said nothing as he watched Ratchet turn back to the counter to pick up a petri dish and a pair of tweezers. From the dish, he removed with the tweezers a small sample of Ultra Magnus’s protoflesh that he had harvested from the bot earlier. He carefully set the film of flexible metal onto one of the fingers of the hand frame inside the tank, then set the empty dish and tweezers aside. “Ratchet,” Ultra Magnus said, finally finding his vocalizer again, “he has no T-cog,” though he felt he honestly did not need to say more than that to drive his point home.

“I _know_ that,” Ratchet muttered as he pulled a wide canister closer to the tank and began to unscrew the lid, but he was forced to pause when his right hand suddenly seized. “Primus, dammit,” he brought his left hand to his right and worked his fingers against his palm for a moment, which was enough to loosen his joints again, this time.

“What are we supposed to do when word of that gets out to the bots returning to the planet?” Ultra Magnus continued, unaware of Ratchet’s own hand struggles, as the Medic had taken care to hide what he was doing in front of his chest. “There will be an instantaneous grab for power, once they realize he’s incapable of leading.”

“A T-cog doesn’t define leadership, Magnus.”

“Not to you and me it doesn’t, but not all bots are as educated and forward-thinking as we are,” Ultra Magnus said as he watched Ratchet remove the lid from the canister and turn its contents upside down into the tank. Hundreds of tiny nanites instantly set upon the piece of protoflesh and began to consume it, their miniature systems analyzing the data of the material so that they would next be able to replicate it.

“And who will lead _here_ ,” Ratchet asked as he shook the final nanite from the container before setting it aside and looking back to Ultra Magnus, “while Bumblebee is gone?”

Ultra Magnus did not want to sound like he was stating the obvious, so he tried to convey his thoughts to Ratchet with a pointed look.

Ratchet rolled his optics as he then realized how ridiculous the question had been. “Of course,” he said as he nodded, but sighed just the same. “You’re fully recovered, so you’re more than capable.”

“It’s only temporary, you know that,” Ultra Magnus was quick to state as Ratchet closed the lid over the tank, where the nanites were now working furiously to replicate and replace the protoflesh over the hand frame.

Ratchet sighed again, watching the nanites for a moment, then winced as he replied. “Yes, yes, I know.” It had already been hard enough to keep Bumblebee from the construction efforts, not to mention the returning shuttles, both of which had the potential to turn dangerous. They could not afford to lose their leader to a falling metal pylon or a crazed Decepticon looking for revenge. Ratchet new that Ultra Magnus was right: If Bumblebee were to listen to _any_ bot telling him to go back to Earth, it would be him. Ratchet could not help hang his head a bit as he scowled at the nanites in the tank. “ _Fine,_ I’ll go.”

“Wonderful,” said Ultra Magnus, “I trust you’ll tell First Aid and Bumblebee then?”

That garnered another glare from Ratchet as he looked back to Ultra Magnus. “Yes, I assumed that was part of this agreement.”

“Excellent,” Ultra Magnus said with a nod, and then dared to broach one more subject, since Ratchet seemed to be in an agreeable mood. “There’s only one issue left, then.”

“What’s that?” Ratchet raised a brow in response.

“What do you want to do about Knock Out?”

“Ugh,” Ratchet put his hands over his faceplates once more. How could he have forgotten about the ex-‘Con so easily?

“I think you should take him with you. His presence is…not good for morale,” Ultra Magnus said, quickly raising his hand in defense when Ratchet dropped his own hands to glare at him. “I realize how bad that sounds, but it’s true, Ratchet. You know this.”

Yet another sigh vented from Ratchet’s frame as he rolled his optics again. Apparently, it was Dump All Your Problems on Ratchet Day. “ _Fine!”_ he grumbled, though he regretted sounding so angry about it and the entire trip to begin with. He knew he had to do his part to ensure the planet was up and running as quickly as possible, and if that meant _leaving_ it, _again_ , well, fine, he would do that.

“I’ll work on forming an official Council while you’re gone so that we can proceed with his tribunal as planned,” Ultra Magnus offered as a form of compensation, and when he saw Ratchet nod affirmatively to that, he continued. “How have things been progressing with him? My apologies that I have not had a moment to sit down with you sooner to discuss all of this, Ratchet. We’ve all been so busy, yourself included, of course.”

Ratchet continually rubbed at the spot on his helm between his chevroned brows as he winced, like his response pained him. “He’s… _trying_ , I think? He seems _incapable_ of normal conversation! You can’t get more than two sentences out of him before he starts glaring or sulking or…I don’t know! I’m a _doctor,_ not a damn psychiatrist!”

“Are you saying he’s not mentally fit for duty?” Ultra Magnus said as he lifted both brows, though he was not surprised in the slightest to hear such a thing about a Decepticon. “Perhaps he should stay here in the brig, then?”

Ratchet considered Ultra Magnus’s offer. This was his out, this was his opportunity to leave Knock Out behind and not have to deal with his ridiculousness for the next few stellar-cycles. The thought of such a life sounded like a vacation. Almost instantaneously, however, Ratchet thought of Optimus, who would never have left the mech to rot in a cell after the efforts he had made to assist the Autobots, however small, and Ratchet was not inclined to think keeping Bumblebee from bleeding out under the Skybridge had been a _small_ thing. “No,” Ratchet finally responded, sulking a bit himself as he eyed the medslab between them, “I’ll take him, it will be fine. First Aid will keep him in check. The mech listens to him, for whatever reason,” he shrugged.

“If you say so,” Ultra Magnus replied. “I will admit, Knock Out’s map overlays have proven highly effective. We’ve found several of the Energon cashes and ammo points he annotated. When more bots return and we have more hauling capacity, I intend to complete more recon missions.”

“I want Wheeljack to apologize to him before we leave,” said Ratchet as he caught Ultra Magnus’s gaze. In keeping with his current thought process of what Optimus would have done in situations like this, he realized he had not pushed for that as much as he should have.

“Ratchet,” Ultra Magnus gave him a look of doubt, “I am not Primus. I cannot force miracles to happen.”

“Well _try,”_ Ratchet glared before he scooped up the claw that he had fitted Ultra Magnus with stellar-cycles ago and snapped it back into larger mech’s servo. He then stood up from his seat, clearly indicating that the conversation was over, and waved Ultra Magnus away with a hand as he turned and headed towards the side office. “Come back tomorrow and your hand should be ready.”

Ultra Magnus eyed the claw, pinching the forceps back and forth once to make sure it was in working order before he nodded to Ratchet’s words. Were it any ‘Bot other Wheeljack, Ultra Magnus would have found a way to make the mech apologize. He had led the Wreckers once, after all, and his very presence commanded respect where most ‘Bots were concerned. Rare was the mech who did not obey his order, but Wheeljack had given such a rare mech a name, and had continually challenged him for thousands of years.

With a sigh, Ultra Magnus stood from the crate and stepped to the medbay exit, already exhausted at the thought of the work he had cut out for him.

 

Wheeljack stood in the hallway outside Knock Out’s cell, his servos crossed, blue optics narrowed, his facemask set in place over his mouth as though he were about to go into battle, or maybe it was a physical indication that he would not be speaking the words Ultra Magnus had ordered him to say.

Knock Out stood on the other side of the glowing orange bars, his red optics just as narrowed as he held Wheeljack’s gaze in a ‘Con versus ‘Bot staring contest. Neither of them had spoken a word since Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus walked down to the brig five minutes ago so that Wheeljack could deliver his apology. Knock Out had not asked what the purpose of their visit was, but he had a guess, since Ultra Magnus was there to monitor the situation.

Ultra Magnus stood a few paces behind Wheeljack and off to one side, his gaze slowly shifting between the two mechs. As usual, he could pick up on the anger emanating from Wheeljack’s EM field, though there was just as much coming from Knock Out’s as well. He checked his internal chronometer, idly wondering how much time he was honestly willing to devote to this project before he needed to move on to more important things, like rebuilding their planet. At the eight-minute mark, Wheeljack finally spoke.

“Nope. Can’t do it,” Wheeljack said with a shrug before he turned and started down the hallway, leaving Ultra Magnus to stand alone at the cell bars.

Ultra Magnus vented a sigh of frustration before narrowing his gaze and starting after Wheeljack. “Then we’ll come back tomorrow and try again.”

“That’s fine,” Knock Out heard Wheeljack say as the two mechs headed for the lift.

 

The next cycle, Wheeljack stood before Knock Out’s cell, his servos crossed, his gaze narrowed, his facemask in place, again engaged in a glaring contest with Knock Out, while Ultra Magnus again stood nearby and monitored their progress, or lack thereof. The only difference was that this time, Ultra Magnus was sporting his newly finished hand, which Knock Out had immediately noticed, though he did not mention it.

This time ten full minutes went by before Wheeljack said “Nope,” and started back down the hallway again, causing Ultra Magnus to glare as he followed after him.

“Wheeljack, if I have to, I’ll bring you down here _every cycle_ until you apologize.”

“That’s fine.”

 

On the third cycle, Knock Out didn’t even bother to stand up or look at Wheeljack. Instead he gave a bored glance elsewhere, his chin resting in his hand, like this was all a game he had no interest in playing anymore.

“Nope,” Wheeljack said after the customary eight-to-ten minutes of silence, and he again turned to go.

“Magnus,” Knock Out began as he rolled his optics and looked over and up to the taller mech before he was cut off.

“I think you mean ‘Sir’,” Ultra Magnus paused by the cell bars to look down at Knock Out, instead of going after Wheeljack.

“Fine, _Sir,”_ Knock Out started again, “this is _ridiculous._ I don’t _need_ an apology from him! I don’t _want_ one!”

“That’s too bad,” was Ultra Magnus’s response before he marched down the hallway.

 

On the fourth cycle, Knock Out kept his back turned to the pair, not even acknowledging their presence, but by the fifth cycle, he’d had enough. He was tired of Wheeljack coming to stare at him in his cage every day; he was probably smiling under that stupid facemask of his.

“Will you just fragging _say_ it so we can _stop_ this nonsense?” Knock Out said from where he sat on his recharge slab, glaring up at Wheeljack. “I won’t even _accept_ it! It’ll be _meaningless!_ All you have to do is _say_ the damn words!”

“Nope,” said Wheeljack, turning to go, and from the other side of the bars, Knock Out heard Ultra Magnus vent with a sigh.

“Why don’t you just _hit_ him already?” Knock Out said to Ultra Magnus, while the taller mech blinked back to him, clearly startled by the question.

“I would never do that.”

“Why not? _That’s_ why he’s not saying it, you’re not giving him any consequences! Just crack him over the head with those gigantic servos of yours and _make_ him say it and then we can be _done_ with this charade! Come _on!”_ Knock Out stood from the slab and walked closer to the bars. “Don’t tell me you’re _enjoying_ this! _Surely_ this is a waste of your valuable _time_! Sir!” Knock Out made sure to add that at the end.

“It is. I was hoping he would come to see that it is also a waste of _his_ time by not following my direct order,” said Ultra Magnus as he glared down the hallway, speaking loud enough so that Wheeljack could hear. “But I refuse to harm him over it.”

“ _Boy_ , it must be _nice_ to have leaders that don’t kick your faceplates in when you refuse to do as they say,” Knock Out said loudly and with heavy sarcasm as he leaned toward the bars just enough so that he could glare at Wheeljack’s form as it moved down the hallway. “What’s _that_ like?”

That was enough to cause Wheeljack to freeze in his tracks, and he turned where he stood, pointing a finger back down the hallway to Knock Out. “Don’t even try that slag with me, ‘Con,” he growled. “You _chose_ that life! You _chose_ to work under that type of leadership!”

“He wasn’t _like_ that in the beginning!” Knock Out yelled back, feeling the need to defend said choices.

“The beginning!?” Wheeljack blinked. “You didn’t even _join_ the Decepticons until the _last_ millionth year of the war! Megatron and his armies had already killed _hundreds of thousands_ by then! Are you tellin’ me you though a fear-mongering _warlord_ would treat his own people with respect!? You’re a fraggin’ _moron!_ ”

“And _you’re_ a fragging coward that—”

“ENOUGH,” Ultra Magnus said in a voice loud enough that it echoed down the entire hallway, silencing the other two mechs instantly. “Get on the lift,” he said, pointing to Wheeljack.

“Gladly!” Wheeljack snapped back to him, then turned to happily follow _that_ order.

“And _you’re_ not helping the situation,” said Ultra Magnus, glancing back and pointing to Knock Out now, though he quickly noticed the ex-‘Con had maneuver himself as far away from the bars as he could get. Ultra Magnus sighed again as he looked across the cell to him. “Knock Out, I’m not going to hit _you, either_.”

“Sure you won’t,” Knock Out said, his optics still wide from being startled by Ultra Magnus’s yell.  He had pushed his lone tire up against the cell wall furthest from the bars, but even at that distance, the proximity alarms were flashing warnings across his HUD.

Ultra Magnus shook his head, then walked down the hallway in the wake of Wheeljack’s anger-filled signature to meet him at the lift, if the mech had even bothered to wait.

 

On the sixth cycle, they stopped coming back to Knock Out’s cell.


	22. An Inquiry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my awesome readers! I just wanted to quickly note that I'll be away on vacation again starting later this week, so I won't be posting Chapter 23 until November 18th.
> 
> Thank you all SO MUCH for coming back time and time again, and for all of your comments, kudos, subscriptions, and kind words, they really make my day!

Smokescreen was pushing the MARB ahead of him, his servos crossed over the wide handlebar, his form slumped downwards so that his chin could rest on the armor plating of his servo, a clear indication of his boredom as he followed Knock Out through the hallways of the Nemesis while the bot cleared the decks of hidden weaponry, ammunition, and Energon reserves. He looked very much like a human child miserably pushing a shopping cart of groceries behind their parent at the supermarket, though he was not aware of this similarity. Smokescreen had not wanted this job, Bumblebee _made_ him do it, and now he’d been stuck on this babysitting detail for three cycles, bored out of his brain node while the others were probably out fighting cybervores and sparkeaters and Primus knows what else Shockwave had guarding all of his secret laboratories that the Autobots were now venturing out to explore.

Today however, they were _finally_ on the last deck of the Nemesis and the final long, winding corridor to be searched. Aside from Knock Out’s directions to stop every few hundred meters so that he could open a hidden panel in the walls, or to direct Smokescreen to steer the MARB into a side room, the pair had barely said fifteen words to each other. Smokescreen had been fine with that, he didn’t have anything to say to the ex-‘Con anyway, but after so many hours of watching Knock Out, now that this detail was winding down, Smokescreen found had questions, _lots_ of questions. There were questions he knew he would not ask, not right then and there, and maybe never, but he had been silently trying to build up the courage to ask a few of the others.

“How many more of these secret stashes do we have to find?” Smokescreen finally spoke up, his chin still on his crossed servos as he hunched over the handlebar.

Knock Out vented a sigh, like the question annoyed him. He slowed his pace as he glanced back from where they had come, then forward again as he tried to get his bearings on their current location. “Ten more, if I remember correctly,” he said, walking a few more steps before pausing by the wall to their right. “Stop here,” he said as he crouched down to one knee and pressed at a few seemingly random rivets along the wall before the hidden panel slid open. He reached his hand in, carefully feeling around before he slowly produced from the space a small carton, which he delicately set onto the MARB, as though the carton’s contents were made of glass or some other highly-sensitive material.

“Are those _fusion_ grenades!?” Smokescreen suddenly straightened up and gaped at the carton.

“Yup,” said Knock Out as he closed the hidden panel and rose back to his peds before carrying on down the hallway. He paused though, to glance back and narrow his gaze at the look of fascination Smokescreen was giving the carton, like a human child in a candy store. “ _Don’t_ touch them, Smokescreen.”

Smokescreen blinked up to Knock Out, scowling once the words finally registered. “Hey, you don’t tell _me_ what to do!”

Knock Out rolled his optics at that. “Oh, well, _excuse me_ then, Herr Kommandant. By all means,” he gestured to the carton with his hand, “ _touch_ the fusion grenades. Just make sure you blame _me_ when you accidentally blow yourself to pieces, since everyone’s stupidity around here is _my_ fault.”

Smokescreen paused mid-grab of one of the grenades, eyeing Knock Out, who was glaring at him now, before he muttered and pulled his hand back. “ _Fine_ ,” he grumbled, sulking a bit as he resumed pushing the MARB behind Knock Out, who had started to walk again. “You sound just like Ratchet.”

“You certainly know how to offend a bot, don’t you?”

“Whatever,” Smokescreen said, though his thoughts quickly drifted back to the questions he had. He slowly inched the MARB forward, so that he eventually came up alongside Knock Out as they walked the halls. “Hey, were you always colored red?”

Knock Out raised a brow over to Smokescreen at that, wondering why Autobots always asked such ridiculous questions, but he responded anyway. “Yes.”

“And did you…Were your fingers…always like _that_?”

Knock Out slowed his pace once more, blinking from Smokescreen to his fingers and back again.  “Like what?”

“Y’know, like so…so _pointy_?”

“Oh,” Knock Out looked to his fingers again, waggling them for a moment before he turned back to Smokescreen. “Not always _this_ pointy, no.”

“Why did you change them, then?”

To that Knock Out smirked before he moved toward the wall on their right and reached his hand out, deliberately scraping his claws against the metal, which resulted in a less-than-pleasing sound as they continued to walk. His sharp digits left five long gouges on the wall’s surface.

Smokescreen cringed at the noise of metal scraping metal, giving a little shiver as he eyed the claw marks along the wall before turning back to Knock Out. “Why would you wanna _scratch_ things?” he asked.

“Not _things_ , Smokescreen,” Knock Out said as he rolled his optics once more, then paused by another wall, this time on the left, “ _bots_ ,” he continued before he crouched down again to open another hidden panel. “Other bots.”

“Why would you wanna scratch other _bots_?” Smokescreen asked as he leaned his elbow joints on the handlebar of the MARB again, watching the items Knock Out was removing from the secret space.

“To keep them away from me,” Knock Out replied as he set another carton of fusion grenades onto the MARB, though he paused to glance up to Smokescreen. “You _do_ know we had a war, right? Wars require weapons.”

Smokescreen glared to that. “Yeah, I _know_ we had a war,” he said with a scowl, trying to keep his thoughts on the matter hidden, though he was failing in that. He had always felt horrible about the fact that he had been put into stasis by Alpha Trion, who had been the one to implant the Omega Key within his chassis to begin with. It had _not_ been fun to wake up nearly three million years later with little understanding of all that had transpired since he was put into stasis, let alone the fact that he was still considered a Childe by most bots’ standards, the stasis having frozen in time not only his frame, but his entire mind as well. Physically, he was only 1.5 million years younger than nearly all of the rest of the Autobots on Team Prime, save for Ratchet, of course, but mentally he was barely out of the Transformer-equivalent of the teenage years, and _everyone_ made a point to remind him of that, _all the time._ Never mind that he’d held one of the Omega Keys. Never mind that he had saved Optimus Prime himself from the burning wreckage of Outpost Omega One. Never mind that the Matrix had offered itself to him during that same time. Apparently, none of those occurrences counted towards “war-time experience”. Sure, the others agreed that Smokescreen was destined for great things, _someday,_ but that day was not today, or tomorrow, or anywhere in the near future, according to _them._

Smokescreen shook his head at the thoughts as he unwillingly reviewed his past, the memories being dragged through his processor whether he wanted them to be or not. He tried to focus on Knock Out, and his sharp fingers, and he wondered whether or not the mech’s claim of them being weapons had actually served him well during the war. Seeking a distraction, Smokescreen was more than pleased to find that they were now walking past the opening to the medbay, and he smirked as they rounded a curve in the corridor, which he instantly recognized. “Hah!” he said, pointing to one of the walls on the left.  “Remember when I stuck you in that wall? That was _epic!”_

“ _Yes_ ,” Knock Out practically growled as they passed by the wall, eyeing it with a glare before they moved on.  He stayed quiet, silently reminiscing that incident before they rounded the corner on another corridor, and then it was his turn to smirk and point triumphantly to a wall, or rather, a hole in a wall which had yet to be repaired. “Remember when I stuck you in _that_ wall?”

Smokescreen blinked at the pile of twisted metal and rods and glared in the same fashion as Knock Out. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered as he quickly hung his head. Knock Out actually laughed to that, and it was the first time Smokescreen had seen him genuinely laugh, maybe, although the more he thought about it, the more he was not so sure.

“You’re denser than a neutron star, Smokescreen,” Knock Out chuckled as he carried on down the hallway.

“You don’t have to be so _mean_ , y’know.”

“And _you_ don’t have to be so stupid.”

Smokescreen glared to that, though his databanks were already pressing him to ask another question, despite the insult. “Were you always a Decepticon?”

Knock Out paused to that, eyeing Smokescreen now as though the mech was trying to interrogate him. “Were you always an Autobot?” he countered.

“Yes,” was Smokescreen’s immediate reply, though he paused for a moment, unconsciously exhibiting his nervousness as he rubbed his right hand against the back of his neck, and his doorwings drooped in hesitation. “I mean…kinda? I guess what I meant to ask is, why did you _become_ a Decepticon?”

Here Knock Out blinked to the younger mech, then glanced away for a moment as he seriously considered the inquiry. In the end, after thoughtful contemplation, he found it easy to respond as he turned back and offered up a quote. “’Be happy in your work, they say, for it enriches you. Be grateful for your alt mode, they say, for it defines you. Be thankful for the system—it protects you. Be mindful of your betters – They think for you. I say _enough. Reject_ your alt mode, _resist_ the system, and your ‘ _betters_ ’? You have none. We are _all_ equal. And we have a _right_ to decide how we live our lives.’”*

Smokescreen raised a brow at the poetry, or whatever it was that Knock Out had just said. “What’s _that_ from?” he asked.

“Megatron’s autobiography, _Towards Peace_ , aka the Decepticon manifesto,” Knock Out replied.

“ _Really_?” Smokescreen blinked, because all that talk about equality and being your own bot did _not_ sound like anything Megatron would have believed.

Knock Out chuckled again at the look on Smokescreen’s faceplates. “Yes, _really_. You never read it?”

“Of course not!” Smokescreen scoffed, his optics narrowing now, as though the idea of an Autobot reading Megatron’s work was blasphemous.

“You should,” Knock Out said as he shrugged, “it’s a time-honored classic.”

Smokescreen made a face, believing that what he was hearing was just a lame excuse. “So, _that’s_ why you joined them, then? Because of a buncha _words_ on a data pad?”

“Those words were _unheard of_ at the time Megatron wrote them,” Knock Out said as he glared at Smokescreen’s ignorance, though he still attempted to explain further. “No one had ever _dared_ to call the Functionists out like that before, _or_ the Senate. Megatron was a revolutionary.”

Smokescreen rolled his optics as he replied, “Sure. Whatever.”

“Have you ever read _Optimus Prime’s_ autobiography?”

That gave Smokescreen pause as he wracked his databases for Prime’s autobiography, but quickly found himself coming up empty-handed. “What autobiography?” he asked.

“Exactly. He never wrote one. He never reached the masses the way Megatron did.”

“What about the Autobot Code!?” Smokescreen said in defense of Prime.

“Hah!” Knock Out laughed as he started to walk again, Smokescreen following behind once more. “Optimus didn’t write that.”

“What about the Covenant of Primus!?”

“He didn’t write _that_ either,” said Knock Out as he glanced back to Smokescreen briefly, long enough to see the look of disappointment cross the younger mech’s faceplates.

“Oh.”

Knock Out rolled his optics at Smokescreen’s ignorance, and then that all-too-familiar sense that Prime was watching quickly dropped down on him, as though there was a literal weight on his shoulders. “Okay, okay, look!” he said, more to the paranoid belief that an invisible Prime was stepping on his conscience than Smokescreen, as he held up his hand to the younger mech. “Look, I’m not saying Prime wasn’t a hero in his _own_ right, of _course_ he was. He gave his spark to save the planet,” Knock Out gave a quick glance around the corridor, then turned back to Smokescreen, who blinked at Knock Out’s explanation. “He was a _Prime_ after all, but he just…He didn’t know how to speak to the _common_ bot, understand? Not the way Megatron did. Megatron made you believe you could _make_ something of yourself, no matter where you came from, what your _caste_ was, what your _alt mode_ was. He didn’t _care_ about that sort of slag.”

Now Smokescreen rolled _his_ optics at Knock Out’s ignorance as he spoke. “Neither did Optimus!”

“How would _I_ have known that? How would I have known that about him if I weren’t _already_ his follower? Optimus may have been an exceptional leader, but he was _severely_ lacking in the self-promotion and advertising department,” Knock Out said as he shook his head and paused before another seemingly nondescript wall. This time he remained standing as he pressed against a few spots on the metal surface before the hidden panel released.

“What are you talking about?” Smokescreen said as he once again paused next to Knock Out with the MARB. “He asked you to join us for _years_! You _knew_ he was an exceptional leader! You _knew_ he had respect for every bot, no matter where they came from! Don’t tell me you never picked up on that!” Smokescreen could not decipher whether or not Knock Out’s supposed reasoning behind his choice to join the Decepticons was genuine, he was not very good at determining if a bot was lying to his face or not. He glared across the MARB to Knock Out, unaware that his servos were slowly clenching into fists as a slow-burning anger started to rise in his spark. “What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense! You chose to stay by Megatron ‘til the bitter end! _Why?_ Why would you _do_ that!?”

Knock Out picked up on Smokescreen’s growing irritation and clenched fists immediately, though he found himself more curious about it than afraid for his own safety. He’d had a lot of different bots yell at him for a lot of different reasons lately, but for him not becoming an Autobot _sooner_ was not one of them. He found that line of reasoning to be ridiculously juvenile, and then he remembered who he was talking to. He lifted his chin to Smokescreen just a tad in a small gesture of defiance to the bot’s anger, waiting a few nano-klicks to let the mech scowl in silence before he replied. “ _I_ think the better question is ‘Why do _you_ care so much’?”

“It just…it doesn’t make _sense!”_ Smokescreen repeated, his rigid doorwings sticking straight out behind him. “He continually offered you the chance to join us, and you always said no!”

“So _what?”_ Knock Out snapped back at him before he waved him off dismissively and reached his hand into the open panel in the wall to fish around for the medical kit he knew he had shoved far into the back of the hiding place, at some point. He was not afraid of Smokescreen. He knew the bot was young, and stupid, but not dangerously so.

“So, we _all know_ Megatron treated his bots like slag! Why would you subject yourself to that!?” Smokescreen yelled, angry that Knock Out would not give him a reasonable answer. He had always wondered why _any_ bot would join the Decepticons, and here he finally had the chance to ask one and he was being given the runaround.

Knock Out pulled the slender metal box from the wall and set it onto the MARB amongst the various other items. “It wasn’t always like that,” he muttered, then flicked his gaze to Smokescreen. “ _He_ wasn’t always like that.” Not that he expected Smokescreen to believe him, none of them did.

Smokescreen finally unclenched his fists and crossed his servos instead, his anger beginning to wane, though he still felt he was owed a decent explanation. “The Vehicons said Megatron beat some of them to _death_ ,” he said, his glare slowly fading into a look of pity, “sometimes for no reason at all.”

“That’s true,” Knock Out merely shrugged and started off down the hallway again, as though they were not discussing the murder of presumably innocent mechs.

Smokescreen frowned at the lack of empathy he was seeing, and he let Knock Out wander ahead of him for several meters before he set his servos on the handlebar of the MARB and slowly followed after, watching Knock Out very carefully for his reaction when he made his next statement. “They also said Megatron used to beat his Commanding Officers when they screwed up.”

“That’s also true,” Knock Out shrugged again before pausing at an intersection of hallways and glancing to the left and right.

“Did _you_ ever screw up?” Smokescreen said, coming to a stop well out of Knock Out’s claw range, just in case.

Knock Out raised a brow to Smokescreen at the question before his gaze instantly darkened. “You remember trapping me in that wall, you said?” he lifted his servo to point down the way they’d come.

Smokescreen looked over his shoulder, then back. “Yeah?” Suddenly he didn’t like where this was going.

“You escaped. _That_ was me screwing up. I got too close to you and you managed to get the Phase Shifter from me and then you escaped. Megatron left me hanging there for an entire deca-cycle and every time he walked by, he would crack me in the faceplates with his fist because _I screwed up._ It was _my_ fault,” Knock Out said, still scowling at Smokescreen, and he made sure to look him dead in the optics as he now pointed down the hallway to his left. “And that time your fragging human _pets_ managed to get onboard and access the ship’s mainframe to download the locations of the Iacon relics?” he continued, _“I_ let them get away with that dataslug. That was _my_ fault. That was me _screwing up._ ”

Knock Out began to count off on his fingers as he spoke, making a fist and extending one digit at a time. “Empty Cybertronian data cylinder whose information _somehow_ ended up in Bulkhead’s brain node: I screwed up. Tried to save Breakdown from MECH when I was ordered not to: I screwed up. Failed to secure the Phase Shifter from Bumblebee in the New York City subway: I screwed up. Ratchet managed to escape after Megatron forced him to assist Shockwave in creating stable Synthetic Energon: I screwed up. _Stupidly_ injected Silas with Dark Energon under Starscream’s orders: I screwed up,” even he had to stop and wince at his own foolishness there. He was not generally one to admit he was wrong, but he would accept the criticism for having followed Starscream’s order _that_ time. Primus, that was possibly one of the dumbest decisions he’d ever made in his life, and he had been legitimately surprised that Megatron let either of them live afterward.

Finally breaking his stare with Smokescreen, Knock Out blinked at the sudden realization of just how many times he had fucked up so many missions, failed Megatron by making poor choices, disobeyed his direct orders, and at times put the entire ship and crew at risk, and he hadn’t even mentioned _half_ of such instances to Smokescreen.  He stared at his now open palm, having used all of his fingers and thumb during his count, then quickly raised his hand to nervously rub at the back of his neck and cast his gaze elsewhere. “I screwed up a _lot,”_ he said, as though making a confession.

Smokescreen had been silently listening, both brows raised as Knock Out rattled off his long list of what he apparently considered to be personal failures. He found it odd to hear the flipside of so many Autobot victories, and had never considered the ramifications that his or any Autobots’ actions had to the Decepticons as _individuals_. In his mind, they had always been “the bad guys”, _collectively_ evil and all of them likeminded with Megatron. Watching Knock Out look away in what seemed to be embarrassment, Smokescreen found himself smiling, not because he found the situation to be funny, but because of what struck him as suddenly so obvious. “It sounds like you didn’t make a very good Decepticon,” he said, giving Knock Out a pointed look for what he hoped the other mech could see as an obviously favorable trait. 

Knock Out turned back to Smokescreen, but he definitely was not sharing any happiness over that realization. “No, I guess I didn’t,” he said as he eyed his peds, clearly bothered. He actually felt horrible about it, that he had done so poorly, that he had somehow managed to screw up being a Decepticon, of all things. It left him questioning why Megatron even kept him around at all, medical skills or not. Sure, he wasn’t as bad as Starscream, he had _never_ been as bad as Starscream. But then again, look how many chances Megatron had given him, even after all those screw ups. So what if the mech had kicked his aft over it, he had always given Knock Out a second chance, and a third and a fourth and so on. Would Optimus Prime have done the same, over and over and _over_ again?

“I think that’s a _good_ thing,” said Smokescreen when he realized that Knock Out wasn’t getting it. He tried to catch Knock Out’s gaze again. “Look, I...I’m _sorry_ I got you stuck in that wall,” Smokescreen offered, despite the fact that he had previously considered that feat to be one of his greatest achievements of all time, “but, I _had_ to get away!” he continued, “You _know_ that! Still…I’m sorry he left you there for so long.”

“ _Spare_ me your Autobot sympathy,” Knock Out scoffed, finally looking back to Smokescreen only to glare at him all over again before he turned to start down the hallway to the left. “Let’s get this slag over with so I can go back to my cell.”

Smokescreen’s shoulders slumped as his apology was rejected, and he was surprised to find that it made him sad, not angry. He _wanted_ to be angry about it, but he just couldn’t, there was something inside him that would not let him. Venting a sigh, he shuffled after Knock Out with the MARB in tow. He had so many more questions, but he felt as though he’d blown his chance to get answers, at least for now. That would not dissuade him from trying again, though. He _would_ try again, soon. He _needed_ answers, and he intended to get them, one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The full page of text from _Towards Peace_ can be found in IDW's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, Volume #34, "Births, Deaths, and Interventions", or on the TFWiki.


	23. A Game of Cards

Knock Out had gone silent for the remainder of the search down the hallways with Smokescreen, purposefully ignoring the other bot. He had quickly regretted everything he had said about his past failures. It was a stupid and dangerous thing to admit one’s faults to another, he knew better than that. The Autobots were making him weak.

Finally, after the last carton of fusion grenades had been carefully removed from its hiding place, the pair walked back to medbay to deliver their findings. The entire process of clearing everything from A Deck had taken hours, and the sun had long-since set over Cybertron’s ruined landscape.

As Knock Out trailed after Smokescreen for a change, making sure to let the Autobot enter the medbay first, a chorus of laughter met both their audials as they made their way down the ramp. Smokescreen parked the MARB beside one of the medslabs before he followed Knock Out’s look towards the commotion across the bay.

Ratchet, Pharma, and a red and white mech with a blue face and visor that Knock Out did not recognize were all perched on chairs they had gathered around a large crate that served as their makeshift table, First Aid was seated on the end of one of the medslabs. Each bot had spread between their hands a collection of playing cards that glowed softly in various colors, a larger stack of the same cards sat in the middle of the crate between them.

From that distance, Knock Out could not make out what game they were playing, but he could definitely hear Pharma as the bot finished his story.

“…and then he said, ‘But Doc, that’s my cam shaft!” Pharma exclaimed, then laughed as the other three chuckled along with him. Knock Out immediately narrowed his gaze, quickly scanning his memory banks for any time he himself might have said something along those lines to Pharma, for he was certain the mech would take every opportunity to tell embarrassing stories about him to everyone he could, despite his previous statement that he would stay silent. Thankfully however, Knock Out could not recall having ever said those words to the Medic. It must be some other poor mech Pharma was snickering about.

Smokescreen smirked to the banter, waiting for Pharma to finish before he spoke up. “This is everything from A Deck, Ratchet,” he called to the group, then looked back over to Knock Out. “Right?”

“Yes,” Knock Out replied, then took one look at the four sets of blue optics staring at him from across the medbay before he eyed Smokescreen and began to slowly backpedal up the ramp. “I’m going back to my cell. Have someone stop by later to lock me up, will you? I’m not sticking around for _that_ nonsense.”

“Eyp eyp eyp!” Ratchet quickly pointed to Knock Out, who instantly froze in place. “I didn’t say you could leave. Smokescreen, you’re free to go.”

“We found fusion grenades!” Smokescreen’s doorwings nearly fluttered with excitement as he pointed to the pile of supplies on the MARB. “Can I have them?”

“ _Fusion_ grenades!? _No_ , you can’t _have_ them!” Ratchet yelled, his frown obvious even from across the bay, which he quickly turned to Knock Out who still remained standing half-way up the ramp. “Primus, you were hiding _fusion_ grenades!?”

Knock Out shrugged his shoulder, blinking to Ratchet’s tone. “So?”

“Awww!” Smokescreen tilted his head back as he groaned in frustration, like being denied the deadly explosives just ruined his entire evening. “Fine. _Bye_ ,” he huffed, then stalked up the ramp and past Knock Out without another word.

“Fusion grenades, eh?” Pharma glanced back to Ratchet as he pulled a playing card from his hand and set it face up onto the crate before him. “I told you, Ratchet, Decepticons are devious individuals. You’re lucky he didn’t use them to take out the _entire_ crew.”

“Tsk, he would never do that, would you, Knock Out?” First Aid asked.

Knock Out narrowed his optics at Pharma’s claim as he replied to First Aid. _Thank Primus for First Aid._ “Of course not.”

“And I told _you_ ,” Ratchet said to Pharma as he too placed a card face up onto the crate, “he’s not a Decepticon anymore.” He pulled his gaze from the card game to look back to Knock Out as he pointed to the medslab First Aid was sitting on, and the tiny cup and bottle of Engeron there. “Your ration and supplements are here. Sit down and drink them.”

Tilting his head back in much the same fashion that Smokescreen had just done, Knock Out rolled his optics at the idea of having to sit there with the rest of them and endure whatever verbal assaults were sure to follow. “Can’t I just take them back to my cell?” he asked.

“No. Sit.”

Knock Out slowly made his way toward the others, and when he sat on the medslab beside his ration, he made sure that First Aid was directly between himself and the other three, and he hunched his frame down a bit, as though he could actually make himself small enough to hide behind the Medic.

“There now, see?” Pharma gestured to Knock Out with a hand, smirking devilishly. “You’re walking _just_ fine! And you were so worried.”

Knock Out did not give Pharma the satisfaction of seeing him scowl to that as he quickly took a swig from the bottle of Energon.

“This is Fixit,” First Aid said as he turned to glance behind him to Knock Out with a smile, at the same time gesturing to the blue-faced bot at the table. “He flew in last night from Spaceport CSSB-16. Fixit, this is—”

“The Bloody Butcher,” said Fixit as he leaned back in his chair to look past First Aid to Knock Out. “Yeah, I know who you are. Lookin’ a little worse for the wear there aren’t ya, buddy?”

“ _Charmed_ , I’m sure,” Knock Out gave Fixit a fake smile with his sarcastic response before he glared at the Medic and sipped at the Energon again. He then eyed the smaller container of Earth minerals and casually elbowed it away from himself.

Noting the tension rising between the two already, First Aid was quick to change the subject. “What else did you find on A Deck, Knock Out?”

“Er…” Knock Out blinked back over to the MARB on the other side of the bay, “two medkits, eight fusion grenades, twenty crates of Energon, three laser pistols, one RPG, a thousand rounds of electrocharge, a neural disruptor plasma gun….”

“Primus,” said Fixit as he blinked to the MARB as well.

“And you were the one to hide all that stuff?” asked First Aid.

“Mostly,” Knock Out replied as he eyed the bottle in his hand once more, “though Starscream revealed a few of his caches to me once. I suspect he had hundreds more, but I don’t know their locations.”

“He could have rigged the place to blow at any time, Ratchet,” said Pharma, who placed another card down onto the crate once First Aid placed his own. “Maybe it’s not _safe_ for us here.”

“Why did you hide all this stuff everywhere?” Fixit asked as he looked back to Knock Out, who had been rolling his optics at Pharma’s words.

“Because you never knew when you might need a few things.”

“Psh,” Ratchet scoffed as he eyed the card Pharma had set down, then grumbled as he tossed what cards he had left in his own hand facedown onto the crate before looking to Knock Out. “You mean like fusion grenades?”

“Yes, like fusion grenades,” Knock Out glared back to Ratchet.

“Did Megatron know about all of this?” Ratchet countered.

“ _That_ is irrelevant.”

“I can hardly see how it would be irrelevant if you were hiding weapons and ammunition from your _leader_ ,” Pharma said, still smiling in an unsavory way as Fixit and First Aid both folded their hand of cards as well, prompting Pharma to reach forward and collect their stacks of cards for himself. “One should never keep information from their Commanding Officers. That’s certainly not how _we_ do things around here.”

“Noted,” Knock Out said as he finally looked up to Pharma to glare back at him.

“Answer my question, Knock Out,” said Ratchet, who was still watching him through narrowed optics.

Knock Out flicked his gaze back to Ratchet, immediately dropping his glare before he quickly looked elsewhere. “No, he did not.”

“So, you _were_ hiding it all from him?” Ratchet asked, just to be sure.

“Yes, we were.”

Fixit lifted one ridge of his visor to that. “Why?”

Knock Out shrugged, unsure of how to describe the reasoning behind it all, though he knew Ratchet would probably only press him further if he refused, so he answered in as few words as possible. “In case he…you know…went off the deep end.”

“Hah!” Pharma laughed to that as he collected the rest of the cards in the middle and began to repeatedly shuffle them together with a speed only a Medic’s hands could produce. “You must have set the bar _extremely_ high for _that!_ Tell me, what does Megatron going ‘off the deep end’ look like to you, eh? If it wasn’t the genocide and the mistreatment of his own people and the lies and oppression and the _countless_ other atrocities that he orchestrated in the name of his ‘cause’, what _was_ ‘the deep end’?” Pharma looked back to Knock Out, his hands continuing to shuffle the cards. “At what point would you have said ‘Hey Megs, I think you’ve gone too far _this_ time!’?”

Knock Out had been scowling to Pharma, but his faceplates quickly dropped to a stare at the last question. He had never really considered what that point would have _actually_ been. Here he had gone to so much trouble to be prepared for the worst, but he had never taken the time to determine what “the worst” actually _was_ morally, ethically, physically. “…I don’t know,” he said, and now he felt like a fragging idiot in front of all these bots. He tried to glance away before Pharma could notice the look of embarrassment crossing his faceplates, but it was too late.

“Of _course_ you don’t,” Pharma said, smirking again before he turned back to the stack of cards in his hands, “I don’t expect you to. You’re _brainwashed_ just like all the others. No matter now, though, the war’s behind us. It’s time for new beginnings! Isn’t that right, Aid?”

“Yes, it is,” First Aid smiled to his combinermate and at the same time sent a signature of reassurance to Knock Out behind him, as he had easily picked up on the other mech’s unease.

“Yes, indeed, yes indeed,” said Pharma as he leaned forward to deal out the cards, “new beginnings all around. Well, I hope you’re up to the _task_ , Knock Out, though I’m sure no one will expect much from you, so at least you have _that_ working in your favor.”

“Knock Out’s going to pass his last four classes and become a fully-licensed Medic,” First Aid said before glancing back to Knock Out, who had been silently nudging the cup of minerals even further away from himself on the medslab, “Isn’t that right?”

“Whoa,” Fixit held up a white hand, looking from the cards he was being dealt to Knock Out. “You aren’t even an _actual_ Medic? I guess _that_ explains a few things.”

“Ahh, good! Something to pass the time while the _able-bodied_ mechs close down the base back on Earth,” Pharma finished dealing the cards, then collected his individual and much larger stack and began to put them in order. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you, Ratchet? Perhaps Aid and I should swap places and he can remain here.”

Knock Out’s optics went wide at that. Ratchet had broken the news to him several cycles ago that they would be returning to Earth, and truthfully, he had been relieved. Although he was not thrilled to be back on the Blue Planet without the ability to transform and the freedom to race along the highways, at least on Earth he stood a better chance at remaining hidden from any Decepticons that would call him a traitor, not to mention the DJD. And while the idea of being trapped on a smaller base with Mr. “Let’s Talk About Our Feelings” Bumblebee and a bunch of humans was also not ideal, he was banking on the fact that the Commander would be too busy to bother with any more of that nonsense, and that the humans would be naturally inclined to stay the hell away from him. To Knock Out, returning to Earth actually sounded wonderful. But if _Pharma_ was there _instead_ of First Aid? That would change _everything_. Knock Out quickly looked to Ratchet at Pharma’s statement, silently praying to Primus that the mech was not having second thoughts.

“I’m sure,” said Ratchet as he eyed his hand of cards, unaware of the stare Knock Out was giving him. “You’re better suited to keep this place running while we’re gone, and First Aid has more experience with the alien culture there than you do.”

“Very well,” Pharma vented a sigh, shrugging a winged shoulder at the same time. “A shame Ambulon needs to remain on Delphi, we could use his assistance here.”

“I haven’t seen him in _ages_ ,” First Aid piped up as he eyed his newly-dealt cards.

“It _has_ been a long time since we all got together,” Pharma quickly acknowledged that as he eyed his cards as well.  “I’m sorry to say we haven’t heard from Medix or Groove since that incident on Luna 2.”

“Yeah,” said First Aid, his shoulders slumping a bit as he spoke, “yeah, I never heard from them again, either.”

“They’re still alive though,” Pharma sounded hopeful as he looked up from his cards to First Aid, and tapped a finger against his own chest plate. “I’d know if they weren’t. _We_ would know if they weren’t.”

First Aid smiled to that as he looked to his combinermate. “I know, Pharma.”

Ratchet meanwhile had noticed Knock Out’s ridiculous attempts to shift the cup of Earth minerals out of sight, and he glared to the mech now between sorting the cards in his hand. “If you’re smart, Knock Out, you’ll drink that _before_ you finish the Energon.”

Knock Out quickly stopped nudging the small container with his elbow joint, eyeing Ratchet as though he was the enemy. “If I take it,” he said, “will you let me go back to my cell?”

Ratchet smirked to that as he looked back to his cards. “You don’t feel like socializing?”

“ _No._ ”

“Alright,” Ratchet said, waving Knock Out away with his free hand, “deal.”

Knock Out grabbed the smaller container at that and quickly tossed back its contents, making a face before he chased it with a swig of Energon from the bottle and then quickly stood from the medslab. He wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. “Great, let’s go then.”

“I’ll take him,” First Aid said with a smile, seemingly more than happy to set his cards aside and quickly follow after Knock Out, who was already headed for the exit.

“Good _night_ , Knock Out,” Pharma said as he glanced over his winged shoulder and smirked to the departing bot, and Knock Out returned the smirk with a glare as he tromped up the ramp and disappeared from view. Pharma rolled his optics to that before looking back to his cards. “He acts like a Childe, Ratchet.”

To that, Ratchet shrugged, contemplating his cards before he pulled one and placed it on the crate top. “Mm-hmm, and if you act like a Childe around here, you get treated like a Childe. Somehow, he hasn’t quite figured that out yet.”

“Primus bless you, Ratchet,” said Fixit, “you’re gonna need it with _that_ one.”

Ratchet muttered something unintelligible as he shifted a few of the cards in his hand, his optics narrowed.

“Oh, please,” said Pharma, “if _anyone_ can turn a ‘Con into a ‘Bot it’s _Ratchet_. Look how well Drift turned out! There’s no denying you didn’t have a hand in that,” Pharma chose a card from his hand and set it on the crate between them all. “Every time I’ve come across Drift, he’s inquired after you, says your words changed his life.”

Ratchet grumbled as he eyed Pharma’s played card and readjusted the cards in his own hand. “Those were _entirely_ different circumstances at an _entirely_ different moment in time and two _entirely_ different mechs.”

“True, true,” Pharma raised a hand.  “Of course, you can take a mech out of the ‘Cons, but you _can’t_ take the ‘Con out of a _mech,_ as the saying goes. Still, your persistence is amusing. Perhaps we should send all the ‘Cons your way, if they ever decide to show up.”

Fixit chuckled to that, “'Ratchet’s Home for Wayward ‘Cons’ has a nice ring to it.”

“How can you _say_ that, Pharma?” Ratchet was quick to call his fellow Medic out as he placed one card on the crate between them. “ _Ambulon_ was a Decepticon!”

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,” Pharma smirked as he responded, eyeing Ratchet a moment before he looked back to his cards.

“I think you have a few sensor cables loose, Pharma,” Fixit raised a brow as he set a card down onto the crate.

“Oh please,” Pharma scoffed to that, narrowing his optics to the cards that had been played, then to what he held in his hand as he mulled them over. “I’m a Medic, we _all_ have a few sensor cables loose.”

 

First Aid made sure to walk alongside Knock Out instead of behind him as they headed down the lift and to the brig. He did not want Knock Out to think they were somehow unequal, as though First Aid was playing the part of a warden marching the prisoner to his cell.  “I wish you would have stayed a little longer,” First Aid said, eyeing Knock Out beside him.

“Why?” Knock Out glanced over to First Aid before rolling his optics at the suggestion. “So everyone can tell me what a frag-up I am for having been a Decepticon? Yes, _that_ sounds like an environment I should spend more time in.”

“Nobody thinks that, Knock Out.”

Knock Out did not believe that for a _second_ , especially where First Aid defending Pharma’s word was concerned, but that point was hardly worth arguing. “How long have you been combining with Pharma and the others?”

First Aid contemplated that before responding. “Only the past two-hundred years or so,” he said, recalculating the dates and times just to be sure before he raised a brow to Knock Out. “Why?”

“Just curious,” Knock Out replied. “And the others…the other two mechs you spoke of…How can you tell that they’re still…you know, _alive?”_ Knock Out had been in the presence of Devastator and the Constructicons several times, though he had never had to treat any of them, and he had _certainly_ not been so stupid as to simply ask them what mind-melding with six bots was like. The moment he asked First Aid however, he could feel the unease over his question emanating from First Aid’s signature, making him instantly regret it. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business.”

Although he was inwardly surprised by Knock Out’s apology, First Aid gave no indication of such. It was not the first time someone had questioned him about being part of a Combining force. “It’s alright, I don’t mind. Like Pharma said, they’re still out there. He can tell. _We_ can tell,” he said, making a point to press a hand to his own chassis, over his spark.

“Is it like…a bond? Like a spark bond?” Knock Out raised a brow.

“I don’t know, maybe? I’ve never done that.”

“But you can feel their presence? All of them? All the time?”

First Aid did not answer right away as he tried to think of the proper words to describe it. “Sort of. It’s just...I don’t know, like a little link or a constant sensory acknowledgement….It’s stronger when they’re nearby, though.”

“Interesting,” said Knock Out, having taken note of the way First Aid clutched at his chestplates. “You must miss them,” and there again was another thing he would have never said to a Constructicon, or _any_ Decepticon, for that matter.

“Oh, of course!” First Aid said, which made Knock Out blink in surprise that any bot would readily agree they cared enough to miss another. “I think about them every cycle! Well…almost every cycle,” and First Aid suddenly frowned as a realization occurred to him. “You know, it’s weird, the longer we’re apart, the less I seem to… _care_ about them,” his gaze lingered on the floor a moment before he looked back to Knock Out, “I mean I do care about them all, of course I do, it’s just….I don’t know. I feel like that should be the other way around, that I should care about them _more_ the longer we’re apart,” he said, clearly confused by what his processors were telling him. “They say absence makes the spark grow fonder, but it doesn’t always feel that way.”

“I don’t know, either,” Knock Out replied, though he _did_ understand that absence would, in fact, rip your spark out of your chassis and step on it. “You Combiners are _so_ …well,” he paused, catching himself in his words before he might offend First Aid, “I suppose it’s just… _different_ for you all. I guess I don’t really understand,” he shrugged, but then quickly moved on to something he _did_ understand, casually giving First Aid a smirk as they walked. “Sooo, _Ironhide_ , hm?”

“What?” First Aid said too quickly as he blinked up to Knock Out.

“Oh please, I saw the way you were looking at him, the way he was flirting with _you_. It was _him_ , wasn’t it?”

First Aid looked straight ahead, his steps becoming more rigid as his frame tensed under the line of questioning. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ _He’s_ the bot _you_ were talking about!” Knock Out pressed on, smirking all the more at First Aid’s subtle reaction. “That conversation we had on the Starhopper years ago! _He’s_ the one!”

First Aid slapped a hand over his forehelm, quickening his pace now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeated, and the lie was so blatantly obvious that Knock Out had to laugh at him.

“You like those big shoulder plates, huh?” Knock Out chuckled, “Atta boy! Hehe. I’m partial to those myself, although suppose they’re not a _requirement_.”

“Oh my God, just…Just please get in the cell,” First Aid said, his faceplates now buried in his hands.

“Listen! Listen,” Knock Out said, still laughing as he did as he was told and so pleased with himself for figuring out the truth that the reality of being a prisoner did not bother him one bit, “Ratchet spoke _very_ highly of him, so at least you know you’re in good company.”

“I am _not_ having this conversation with you,” First Aid, clearly flustered, quickly removed his hands from his face to run his fingers over the panel on the wall and bring the orange glowbars to life between them.

“Aww, First Aid,” Knock Out said as he rolled his optics and vented a sigh, leaning his shoulder against the bars, “you’re no _fun_.”

“I am _too_ fun!” First Aid said, glaring for a moment at the ex-‘Con in the cell, though he suddenly shifted his anger into a smirk behind his mask that was so apparent even Knock Out could decipher it. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything at all, but First Aid found that he could not help himself, as though proving to Knock Out that he _wasn’t_ a prude was suddenly so important. “Just ask Ironhide.”

Knock Out blinked to that, his optics going wide. “Did you just… _Wait!”_ he said as he quickly pressed himself against the bars, watching First Aid as he started back towards the lift. “You’re gonna leave me hanging with _that!?_ _Come on!”_

“Good _night!”_ First Aid yelled over his shoulder, still grinning audial to audial behind his mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fixit character depicted in this story is based off of the IDW comic book description and NOT the one from the Robots In Disguise cartoon. I briefly considered using that one, and then I figured Knock Out would just be so annoyed by the minibot that he would probably end up throwing him across the room or something.


	24. A Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *WARNING* There's some sexual harassment that takes place in this chapter after the first scene between Knock Out and First Aid, so if you don't want to read that, you should stop there.

The next morning, First Aid went straight from Ironhide’s ship to the brig of the Nemesis to collect Knock Out so that the two of them could get an early start on preparing the medkits they were to take back to Earth. Never mind what First Aid had been doing on Ironhide’s ship the rest of the evening last night. Never mind First Aid’s smirk that Knock Out noticed despite his facemask, and the relentless teasing that garnered from the ex-‘Con.

“You know I can _smell_ him on you,” Knock Out said as they entered the medbay, the motion sensor lights flickering on overhead.

First Aid whipped his head around to Knock Out at that and nearly tripped the rest of the way down the ramp. “You _smell_ him!?”

“Oh, so you _were_ with him last night, then?”

“I never said that, and he doesn’t _smell_ ,” First Aid muttered as he quickly walked past Knock Out and further into the medbay.

“Psh, yes he does. You all do.”

“…Really?” First Aid blinked back to Knock Out, then quickly lowered his face to his own arm, retracting his facemask to give his servo a sniff. His olfactories did not pick up a single scent.

“Yes, _he_ smells like burnt motor oil and axel grease, and _you_ smell like Energon sweets and a hint of propex solution. It’s not a _bad_ thing,” Knock Out shrugged.

First Aid quickly lowered his arm with every intention to reply, but his attention was suddenly stolen away from Knock Out and to the open doorway of the office on the opposite end of the medbay. His visor narrowed, First Aid stalked past Knock Out so that he could gaze into the smaller room, only to spot Ratchet fast asleep in the chair behind the desk. “Tsk, he slept there _again_?” First Aid scolded, “This is the _third_ time this deca-cycle. I’m glad he’s finally getting the power-down he needs, but he _really_ ought to be on a recharge slab. 

Knock Out followed First Aid a few paces before he paused beside the smaller mech, leaning to the right to catch a glimpse of Ratchet asleep in the chair behind _his_ former desk, then he laughed out loud. He quickly slapped his hand over his mouth and turned away, all of his recall sensors warning him not to express laughter in such a public place as the medbay where anyone could walk in and see him at any moment, but he simply couldn’t help it.

“What?” First Aid turned back to Knock Out, giving him a small glare as he set his hands on his hips. “Give him a break! He’s been exhausted!”

“It’s not that! It’s not that!” Knock Out said, clearly unable to contain himself as he now tried to cover his entire face with his hand, his shoulder plates shaking as he tried to reign in his laughter.

“ _What_ then?”

“That _chair!”_

First Aid glanced back to Ratchet in the chair that was lounged back so far it might as well have been a slab. “What about it? He likes it. He says it’s comfortable.”

“Yes, because it’s _meant_ to be comfortable, First Aid,” Knock Out chuckled.

“Aren’t _all_ chairs meant to provide _some_ level of comfort?” First Aid asked as he looked from the office back to Knock Out.

Still struggling to keep his laughter in check, Knock Out leaned his hand on the medslab just to the left of First Aid as he contemplated how to break the news to the innocent Medic. Primus, it was too perfect. He tilted his head down to First Aid, lowering his vocalizer as he spoke. “That’s an _interfacing_ chair.”

“Oh my GOD!” First Aid’s optics went wide under his visor as he unconsciously grabbed Knock Out’s one servo with a hand, clearly disturbed by Knock Out’s statement. “The chair has _sex with you!_?” he gaped to Knock Out now. Interfacing _chairs?_ Did they really _make_ such a thing!? That was _horrific!_ “The chair _interfaces_ with him!?”

“No, no, no!” Knock Out buried his faceplates into his hand again as he laughed, despite First Aid clinging to his elbow. “You interface _on top of_ it! With another bot! While you _sit_ in it! And you can shift it around into different positions!” he peeked out from between his fingers long enough to catch First Aid’s gaze and repeat the other mech’s words before bursting into another fit of laughter. “’The chair has _sex_ with you!?’ Hahaha! Wait a minute,” he suddenly paused, “that’s actually not a bad idea.”

“But that was _your_ office!” First Aid pulled his hand from Knock Out’s arm to cross his own servos over his chest, like Ratchet choosing to power down in the chair was all Knock Out’s fault.

“No kidding!” Knock Out said as he fell into a fit of laughter again.

“But you... _Eww!”_ said First Aid, making a face as he finally realized the truth of it all. _“_ You mean you and Breakdown…”

“ _All_ the time. Right there. _Right_ where Ratchet is sleeping.”

“Oh my God,” First Aid said again as he slapped both hands over his face plates, embarrassment wafting from his EM field.

“Think we should tell him?”

“NO!” First Aid exclaimed from under his hands, which he then quickly moved to the top of his helm as he was suddenly faced with a moral dilemma. On the one hand, _surely_ Ratchet would want to know he was choosing to offline on an interfacing chair, but on the other hand, First Aid was _far_ too embarrassed by the topic to tell him that. “I...I mean, yes? Wait, _no!”_

“Yeah, me either,” Knock continued to chuckle beside First Aid, his helm almost touching the medslab as he’d all but keeled over from the laughter. “You’re totally right, let him keep dozing off there!”

“Ugh, you’re so _gross_!”

“Ahh, Primus,” Knock Out vented a sigh and then paused to take a quick glance around. That no one had arrived to beat the slag out of him for laughing so hard was a miracle. “You know,” he said as he looked back to First Aid once more, “maybe you and Ironhide could give the chair a spin?”

“Shhh!” First Aid brought a finger to his mouth as he quickly glanced around.

“Oh, is that a _secret?”_ Knock Out suddenly perked up, all traces of laughter forgotten. “I thought Autobots didn’t _have_ secrets?”

“Of  _course_ we do!” First Aid glared back to Knock Out at that before he moved to one of the counters and opened up one of the drawers there so that they could begin their task. “But it’s…it’s _not_ a _secret_ it’s just…not everyone knows. So please don’t go spreading it around.”

“Secret lovers, huh?” Knock Out smirked again as he moved after First Aid. “Well, secret lovers _minus_ the interfacing part, and possibly the love as well. You know the humans have a _wonderful_ song about secret lovers, it goes—” Knock Out inhaled a vent, clearly intending to belt out the human song before First Aid intervened.

“Knock Ooout!” First Aid thought he had made himself clear, but apparently not. He turned from the drawers to grab Knock Out’s servo again, and begged. “ _Please!_ ”

“Okay, okay, don’t worry! I won’t tell a spark,” Knock Out laughed at First Aid’s desperation, then gave a side-nod to the office where Ratchet still slept. “Does he know?”

“Yes,” First Aid said, almost reluctantly, releasing Knock Out’s arm before he turned back to the drawer.

“Does Pharma know?”

“No.”

“ _Really?_ ” Knock Out blinked to that.

“Why is that so surprising?”

“I thought you Combiners were all buddy-buddy and told each other _everything?”_

“No,” First Aid frowned, “where did you get _that_ idea?”

Knock Out blinked to that, pausing as he wracked his neocortex for where that assumption had come from.  Had he honestly learned that from the Constructions, or had he just assumed it? He stared after First Aid for a moment before he replied, “I don’t know,” but then something else distracted him completely as he noticed First Aid still had his mask retracted. “You fixed your face.”

“Ratchet did, yeah,” First Aid said, becoming instantly self-conscious as he quickly engaged his facemask to shutter it back into place.

“It looks good,” Knock Out said as he shrugged, “You should wear it out more often.”

First Aid silently smirked to that, though his attention was drawn back to the office as Ratchet appeared in the doorway. “Good morning, Ratchet,” First Aid said, smiling nervously as he remembered exactly where and on _what_ Ratchet had just been sleeping.

Ratchet, his optic shutters still heavy, eyed the two other mechs as he stepped into the medbay, unconsciously rubbing one hand with the other. “I’ll go get the rations,” he grumbled, though he paused when he reached the pair to give Knock Out a critical once-over. “I think those patches can come off today.”

“Finally!” Knock Out threw his hand into the air before he started towards the exit as well.  “I’ll go fire up the oil bath.”

“We had to drain it and use the oil in the backup generators,” said Ratchet as he moved past Knock Out, who had come to a complete stop at Ratchet’s words.

Knock Out tilted his head back and vented a long sigh as he spoke. “Of _course_ you did,” because a functioning oil bath would just be _too good_ to be true.

“The wash racks still work,” First Aid offered from where he had taken up a seat at the counter.

“Ugh, well I suppose that’s better than _nothing_.”

 

Knock Out sat on the bench of the wash rack, his frame completely engulfed by cleansing solution as it rained down on him from the overhead nozzles. His optics shuttered, he was imagining himself back on Earth, in his alt mode, parked on some glorious piece of land with _no_ humans and an _amazing_ view and the rain was pouring down and it was _pure, clean_ water, _not_ acid rain. No wait, he wasn’t outdoors, he was _indoors_ , inside one of those automated carwashes, and all the brushes and dangling rubber wipes were rough but not _too_ rough, and –

Suddenly the streams of cleanser were cut off, and Knock Out scowled, his optics still shuttered as he tried desperately to hang onto his daydream and speak at the same time. “Bulkhead, you _promised_ me thirty klicks! It’s only been _ten!”_

“Need a little help in there?”

Knock Out’s optics snapped opened at the voice, then narrowed at who he saw standing before him, and the mech was already much too close for comfort. “ _No_ , I don’t need any help,” he growled to Pharma, though he quickly looked past his wings to the closed exit door. “I thought Bulkhead was standing guard?” _Thanks a lot, Bulkhead_. Sure, the giant mech had been posted up at the door to keep Knock Out _in_ and not to keep other bots _out_ of the wash racks, but he was still obviously a horrible sentry.

“He had other things that needed tending to,” Pharma said with a smirk, his optics roaming up and down Knock Out’s frame before he gestured to him with a hand. “Tsk, you _clearly_ need help, look at your arm. How do you intend to clean _that_?”

Knock Out gave his still grimy-looking servo a quick glance. It was true that he’d been unsuccessful in maneuvering the cleanser brush in such a way that he could hold it in his one hand and reach his arm at the same time, but he had given up relatively quickly, choosing instead to take his remaining twenty klicks to fantasize about car washes and his alt mode, which he missed horribly at this point. He eyed Pharma again as the Seeker reached for the cleanser brush and plucked it from its holding rack on the wall.

“Don’t touch me,” Knock Out said, watching the bot’s every move as he began to calculate his own, and whether or not it would be worth trying to run, trying to fight, or simply giving in to whatever Pharma had planned here.

Pharma grinned, leaning one shoulder against the edge of the stall Knock Out was seated in as he replied, “There’s such _wonderful_ irony in a bot saying ‘No’ to the very mech that _taught_ him the concept of consent, don’t you think?”

 

_Pharma had not been able to take his optics off the bright-red mech sitting in his medbay since the moment the bot walked in. It was early morning, and the season being what it was, the sun had yet to rise over the Dead End, a run-down and destitute section of the Cybertronian city of Rodion where the unlisted medical clinic was located. Although the clinic belonged to Ratchet, Pharma frequently volunteered his medical services at the facility, for he held the same belief as his Medic counterpart: That all bots deserved the same free healthcare, regardless of their function or caste. It had been only a deca-cycle since the Functionists declared the major city hospitals off limits to the lower castes, and the number of patients coming to the little clinic in the Dead End had since tripled._

_The mech sitting on the medslab was not the first Pleasurebot Pharma had encountered since starting his rotations at the clinic, but it was certainly the first one that had truly caught his optic. He simply could not stop staring at the sparkling, flawless metallic paint job or the intricate feathering of the armor plating or the ruby-red optics set against black sclera that kept shifting their curious gaze around the room._

_Despite the glorious view Pharma had been gifted from his current patient, he still narrowed his gaze at the empty prescription vial he held in his hand before he glanced back to the other mech, whose purpose of this visit was now questionable. The bot claimed he had been given the prescription at a medical facility in Iacon and swore up and down that he was recovering from some sort of unintentionally ingested poison. And though the mech did succumb to a rattling cough every five minutes or so, and the empty vial had clearly come from an Iaconian medical facility, Pharma had no way of verifying his story. There were no CMRD stations at the clinic, that was part of what kept it and those in need of medical care safe. No records, no charts, no recording devices of any kind, no designation needed to be treated, and no questions asked. Well, **almost** no questions asked._

_“What do you mean you need **two** refills?” Pharma said as he eyed the bot critically. This clinic was located in the Dead End after all, and there had been no shortage of lower-caste unmentionables that had come marching through the doors looking for handouts of everything from standard inoculations to high-grade pharmaceuticals that could easily be sold on the streets for hundreds of credits a hit. Not that the medication **this** bot was asking for would be worth anything on the street, but the whole thing still seemed suspicious. _

_“The other one’s for a friend,” the red bot said, blinking back to Pharma, as though he did not understand why his request was so suspect._

_Pharma scoffed at the mech’s response. “That’s what **all** the bots say when it comes to prescriptions. Why doesn’t your **friend** come down here and get the refill themselves?” he asked, his optics recalibrating to focusing on the shimmering metal collar around the other bot’s neck. _

_“They’re too sick and this place is too far from the hab complex. They can’t make the drive.”_

_Pharma continued to stare the mech’s collar, and even from his slight distance, he could just make out the Cybertronian lettering scrawled across the metallic surface: “To comfort, to please, to satisfy, to—” and the rest of the engraved inscription was lost behind the curve of the bot’s neck. The collar was not an indication of servitude but rather an advertisement of the bot’s level of programming. The rarer the metal, the more intricate and complex the coding, and while Pharma was no metallurgist, he knew an extraordinary alloy when he saw one. And now here was one such extraordinary alloy, sitting in his medbay, the two of them the only mechs in the entire building. As in all clinics, there was a strict rule against demanding payment from a patient, **any** form of payment, but Pharma found the opportunity simply too good to pass up. Ratchet would disown him if he ever found out, but the chances of that happening were highly unlikely._

_“What are you willing to give me in return?” Pharma asked, offering the bot a smile, as though such an inquiry was commonplace._

_“What do you want?” the red mech replied, seemingly unphased by the question._

_“What do I **want**?” Pharma stared for a moment, startled by how easy this was going to be before he grinned again and set the empty vial in his hand aside.  Stepping closer to the medslab, he ran his gaze up and down the red bot’s frame once more as he replied, “Why don’t you get on your knees and show me what you can do with that pretty mouth of yours?”_

“What do you _want_ , Pharma?” Knock Out said, his red optics glaring to the other bot.

“What do I _want_? Hmm,” Pharma tapped a finger against his mouth at that question as he considered his response. “That’s a complex question with a complex answer. However, I’m here to ask you what _you_ want?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Oh, come on, let’s not race around the cyberbush,” Pharma smiled as he took a step further into the stall.

Knock Out instantly leaned away from the Medic as far as he could, although that was not very far at all as he had already attempted to cram himself as far back into the stall as possible. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his desperate gaze once more shifting to the exit. _Goddamit, Bulkhead, you were supposed to stand guard…_

“Give me your hand,” Pharma said with a smirk as he offered his own servo to Knock Out.

Knock Out eyed Pharma’s outstretched hand for several seconds as he contemplated his options. Was it worth it to attempt to overpower the Medic? No, Knock Out knew better than that. Not only was he certain Pharma could kick his aft in his current state, Knock Out knew no one would believe him if he said Pharma had been attempting to block his path, and everyone would believe Pharma when the mech made up some lie about “the Decepticon” attacking him in the wash racks. And that was all beside the fact that Knock Out would honestly rather put up with what he hoped would be only a few klicks of uncomfortable heavy petting than tell _anyone_ on the entire planet what the Seeker was attempting here.

With great reluctance, Knock Out slowly offered his hand to Pharma.

 

_The red mech apparently needed no further direction as he slid from the medslab and sank to his knee-guards immediately, his hands moving to the Medic’s hips with the intent to open the latches along the protective armor plating there. Pharma was so shocked at the bot’s willingness and complete lack of shame regarding the whole situation that he could not help but laugh in surprise._

_“ **Stop!”** Pharma said as he shoved the palm of his right hand square against the red mech’s forehelm, forcing him to tilt his head back. “Primus, you didn’t even bat an **optic** shutter! What’s **wrong** with you!?” Pharma glared down to the mech now poised between his legs. Honestly, where was the fun in instantaneous compliance?   _

_The Pleasurebot, so obviously confused as to why he was suddenly being given an order that was the complete opposite of what he had been told just two nano-klicks ago, blinked up to Pharma with concern, as though he had done something wrong. “But you said—”_

_“I **know** what I said but that doesn’t mean you **have** to do it!”_

_“But I need the refills,” the bot replied, both hands still gripping Pharma’s thighs as he stared up at the him._

_“And it never occurred to you to tell me ‘No’ and then try to barter for something else? Something a little less **degrading** for you, perhaps?” Pharma raised both brows down to the bot clinging to his hips. _

_“What’s ‘degrading’?”_

_“You! You willing to submit to me the moment I suggest it!”_

_“ **That’s** what that word means?”_

_Pharma vented a sigh as he removed his hand from the mech’s head to place it his own forehelm. “Oh Primus,” he muttered, rolling his optics at the ignorance of the other bot._

“I’m _talking_ , Knock Out, about First Aid,” said Pharma as he clenched Knock Out’s wrist tightly in his left hand, while his right worked the brush full of suds up and down Knock Out’s arm.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” Knock Out glared as much to the accusation as Pharma’s unwanted touch. “You think I _want_ him?”

“Want him, intend to harm him, one of the two, perhaps both?” Pharma shrugged as he continued to scrub Knock Out’s servo with the bristles, his grip unnecessarily tight.

“Are you _kidding_ me!? I’ve done the exact _opposite_ since the day I _met_ him! I’ve kept him _out_ of harm’s way!”

“Good!” Pharma said with a smile, though his optics betrayed his continued lack of trust as he stepped even further into the stall to lord his slightly larger frame over Knock Out imposingly. “That’s _good_! His life _is_ more important than yours, after all. And while you’re back on Earth, I expect you to keep your distance, unless you see the need to keep him out of harm’s way _again_ ,” Pharma said as he suddenly gave Knock Out’s arm a rough tug, forcing the mech to lean forward so that Pharma could whisper into his audial. “He’s special, you know. Pure. _Untouched_. I don’t want you corrupting his mind and frame with your Decepticon behaviors and your... _other_ ways. Stand up.”

_“Stand up,” Pharma commanded, and the red mech quickly obliged. Now standing mere inches from one another, Pharma raised both his hands and set them against the mech’s chest, slowly trailing his fingers along the seams of the plating there, down and around to the grill-lined sides of his torso and then down to the mech’s thighs, which Pharma clutched tightly as he pulled the mech’s frame up against his own. “Do you like me touching you like this?” he asked, his optics locked with the Pleasurebot’s._

_The red mech had given no mind to Pharma’s wandering hands. He did not pull away, he did not go ridged with fear, yet he did not reciprocate in any fashion, either. He did however offer a tiny little smirk with his response. “If that’s what pleases you.”_

_“That doesn’t answer my question,” Pharma said, his optics narrowing a bit as he shifted his hands to mech’s skidplates. “Do you **like** this? Are you **okay** with me doing this?”_

_“If…that’s what pleases you?” the bot replied, lifting a dark brow and looking genuinely confused by the question._

Knock Out stood from the bench as instructed, sending a glare over his now patch-free shoulder to Pharma as the Seeker forced him to turn around and began to scrub the brush against his remaining axle while still keeping a hard grip on Knock Out’s wrist. “Saving First Aid for _yourself_ , are you?” Knock Out asked as he internally became more and more concerned for the smaller Medic’s ultimate fate.

“Hah! Hardly,” Pharma chuckled, finally releasing Knock Out’s wrist so that he could grab him by the tire and rub the brush back and forth across its rim. “I just believe in preserving a bot’s innocence, there are so few _left_ with such qualities, after all. Is that so wrong?”

“I won’t _do_ anything to him, Pharma,” Knock Out rolled his optics before he scowled at the back wall of the wash rack. _Thank Primus_ they were going to Earth in a matter of cycles and _thank Primus_ Pharma _wasn’t_ coming with them. And while Knock Out was truthful in that he wouldn’t “do” anything to First Aid, he was already wracking his brain node for words effective enough to convince the mech how truly fragged up his combinermate was. First Aid had mentioned that Pharma was unaware of his time spent with Ironhide, and that was clearly true, as Pharma still believed the mech to be “untouched”. Maybe the combinermates were not as close as he had originally assumed? Maybe Knock Out could convince First Aid after all?

“How can I be so sure?” Pharma asked, pausing in his scrubbing to lean down and whisper into Knock Out’s left audial. “That’s what you’re _programmed_ to do, isn’t it?”

_“Have you ever refused a request for your services?” Pharma asked, his hands still clutching the Pleasurebot’s aft plates as he lifted a brow down to the slightly smaller mech, whose big red optics and EM field conveyed more and more confusion by the nano-klick._

_“No, of course not.”_

_“But you know that you **can** , yes?”_

_“What do you mean?”_

Pharma’s last remark was finally enough to cause Knock Out to act, and he shrugged out from under the Seeker’s looming frame to then turn shove him away with his hand, though he missed completely, as Pharma had taken several quick steps back the second Knock Out moved. “Primus, after all this time you’re _still_ as uneducated as the rest of them,” Knock Out growled, unconsciously flipping gears in his engine as his anger began to rise.

Pharma laughed at the supposed insult and remained where he stood, unphased by the angry signature being pushed his way. “You’re telling me a _Decepticon_ with _your_ primary function wouldn’t—”

“I’m _not_ a Decepticon and that is _not_ my primary function anymore!” Knock Out practically yelled as he pointed a sharp finger to Pharma. Dammit, if he only had access to his servo-weaponry, he would have sliced Pharma’s face in two by now.

“Oh, no?” Pharma’s laughter suddenly cut from his vocalizer, his smile dropping away as well as he flung the scrub brush aside. He paused with his right arm still held out straight, the armor plates of his servo suddenly parting and rising up as they spun and pulled apart, his hand shifting away at the wrist as his arm transformed from nearly the elbow down into the wide bar of a gigantic chain saw with a full skip chain of diamond-tipped teeth.

Knock Out gaped, simultaneously full of saw envy and fear at the same time. Well, _someone_ had gotten a few upgrades in the past four million years. He cringed and retreated a few steps back into the stall, raising his hand but keeping it close to his frame. He instantly regretted what he’d just said, and quickly resorted to old tactics before things went even further south. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…I shouldn’t have said that!”

Pharma was still not smiling as he stepped back up into the stall and shot his left hand out to grip his fingers and thumb around Knock Out’s jaw. The chainsaw he lifted and then set against the newly-healed protoskin of Knock Out’s left shoulder, the bar of jagged teeth prickling against the delicate metal. He had not put the chain into motion, yet.

“So, what you’re _saying_ ,” Pharma asked as he yanked Knock Out toward him so hard that their chest plates banged together, “is that when I do _this,_ it doesn’t set off a _dozen_ reactive response sequences in your neocortex?” And then he brought their faces together, Pharma’s glossa forcing its way past Knock Out’s clenched lips and denta and into his mouth.

 

_“You don’t have to service every bot that propositions you. You **do** know that, don’t you?” Pharma asked, and although he was enjoying the sensation of holding a hot little engine against his chassis, Pharma was suddenly having second thoughts. “You know you’re **allowed** to say ‘No’, right?”_

_“I guess so?” the Pleasurebot said, canting his head to one side as he blinked up to Pharma. He then made a quick, internal time check on his chronometer and realized that he had now spent nearly twenty klicks inside this clinic and he **still** did not have what he had come for. He was not used to being forced to wait for things, or having to convince others to do as he asked. He was only just becoming acquainted with “life as a commoner” as his friend had put it. This Medic **clearly** wanted servicing, but he just did not have the time today. His friend was counting on him to bring home the medication that they needed far more than he did, he still needed to get ahold of some Energon as neither of them had refueled in cycles, and the all-important necessity of finding a decent paying job still loomed over his head. _

_His optics still staring up into Pharma’s, the red mech lifted one corner of his mouth in a smirk again as he raised both hands, cupping them under Pharma’s jaw and tilting Pharma’s head down so that he could press his lips against the Medic’s. He teased his glossa in gently, and the second he was past Pharma’s denta, his HUD lit up with a surge of information as the tiny receptors on his tongue began to gather data as they tapped into the other mech’s sensory and impulse fields through the thin protoflesh inside Pharma’s mouth._

_Pharma was the first “commoner” the red mech had ever “tasted”, and he was not sure what to make of him, or of the Medic’s servicing preferences, all of which were quickly fed through the Pleasurebot’s processor to analyze. While Pharma’s blue optics had shuttered the moment the bot touched his face plates, the Pleasurebot’s remained slightly open, though his gaze was focused internally on the data streams pouring in. What he found there was something his programming had never encountered before. He did not have the time to speculate on that however, as his primary goal for this trip was overriding his curiosity. Pulling his lips free from Pharma’s, he brushed the side of his face against the other mech’s as he shifted his head so that he could softly purr into Pharma’s audial, “I really need those refills.”_

_Pharma’s optics snapped open to that, and he straightened his frame up as he released a vented sigh and offered the mech a smile. “You’re **adorable** ,” he said almost wistfully as he momentarily held the bot’s chin in one hand. “But if you don’t smarten up real quick, **someone’s** going to take advantage of you. I’ll be right back with the refills,” he chuckled, then released the smaller mech from his grip and stepped out of the room._

 

Despite having shuttered his optics the moment Pharma grabbed him by the chin and shoved his way into his mouth, multiple lines of code began filling Knock Out’s internal data screen, informing Knock Out of all the ways Pharma’s frame and programming could be stimulated to achieve optimal results. And because this was not the first time the two mechs had locked lips, Knock Out’s internal applications were coming up with even more suggested patterns and sequences than normal. His programming was designed to recognize a bot’s sexual desires, but he was _not_ however, programmed to _understand_ the desire, the psychology of it, or whether the desire was morally right or wrong, as ambiguous as those lines could sometimes be. That was not a part of his primary function. _Those_ aspects of desire he’d had to learn on his own.

As Pharma finally pulled back and released him from the kiss, Knock Out’s programming was telling him to scream and try to escape the situation, not because that’s what he actually _felt_ like doing (although he certainly did), but because _that’s what Pharma desired_. All those years ago in that unlisted clinic in the Dead End when Pharma had asked him if he understood the concept of consent was not actually Pharma having second thoughts because he’d had a change of spark, or because he suddenly remembered his moral integrity, but because he wanted to interface with a bot that was telling him “No,” and _not_ in that role-playing it’s-all-in-good-fun-and-we’ll-make-up-a-safe-word kind of way, either.

It had taken the young and dangerously naïve Knock Out several stellar-cycles to come to the realization that what Pharma wanted was _wrong_ , his processors unable to comprehend a bot who lusted after others that _did not want to reciprocate_. It was a horribly messed up riddle that took him _far_ too long to solve, but once he did, Knock Out _never_ went back to that clinic again, even in those rare instances when he needed medical treatment and probably should have.

But what embarrassed Knock Out the most was the fact that he had been so certain of himself, he had been so sure that _he_ was the one playing Pharma for the fool and manipulating him into giving him the medication, but it had been the complete opposite, Pharma having been the one to take advantage of the situation by getting handsy with a patient he knew was too ignorant to realize that what he was doing was wrong.

Knock Out could not help but cringe where he stood as that memory filtered into his processor, while at the same time struggling to ignore what his primary programming was telling him. He knew better than to give Pharma what he wanted, but he quickly recalled that he already had, several times in fact since the Seeker Medic had arrived. Pharma enjoyed resistance, and here Knock Out had been doing just that the entire time. Primus, he was such a fragging idiot.

“Aww. There, there, Pleasurebot,” Pharma said with a smirk, as though he could read the self-degradation emanating from Knock Out’s EM field. Releasing Knock Out’s chin from his grip, Pharma stepped back from the wash rack stall and transformed his right servo from a chainsaw back into a hand. “If I find out you’ve harmed First Aid in _any_ way while you’re gone from this planet,” he said, his blue optics narrowed despite his grin, “I’ll be sure to let the entire Autobot faction know _exactly_ what you are, and trust me, they won’t be as accepting of you as the Decepticons were.”

Knock Out had no doubt about that, as even Arcee had kept her function hidden all these years she’d sworn allegiance to the Autobots. Despite her affiliation, Knock Out trusted Arcee’s judgement, and in truth, he always had, with almost everything. She would not have been silent with the Autobots about her past without good reason. “I _won’t_ , Pharma,” Knock Out said as he tried to convey his sincerity as best he could, “you have my _word.”_

“Tsk, if only that were _worth_ something, Knock Out,” Pharma lamented and yet smiled just the same before he turned and headed for the exit.

_“Here you are,” Pharma returned to the small room roughly ten klicks later to place two vials into the bot’s hands, and while he did not mention it, he had taken a few of those klicks to review the mech’s symptoms and compare them against a medical encyclopedia he had stored on a data pad. So what if he took advantage of the situation, he was still a Medic, he still **cared** enough treat bots when they needed it. That was how he justified his actions, anyway. “Listen, you and your… **friend** ,” fictitious or not, “should take it easy for the next few stellar-cycles. Don’t drive too fast or too far, and don’t…over-exert yourselves, if you know what I mean. That’s where you’ll get into trouble. Come back if you ever need any more refills,” Pharma concluded as he shrugged, and he watched the red mech tuck the vials away into the subspaces of his chassis. “You know where to find me.”_

_“Thank you, Doctor.”_

_“Mm-hmm,” Pharma muttered as he eyed the datapad that he had carried back into the room with him. “The designation’s Pharma. And you are…?” he asked, going against yet another protocol._

_“Knock Out.”_

_“How very fitting,” Pharma said with a grin as he looked up from the datapad just in time to watch Knock Out smirk in return before he moved to the door._

_“Er…Knock Out?” said Pharma, lifting a white brow to the mech, who paused to glance back at him from the doorway. “Out of sheer curiosity, how much **do** you normally charge for your services? Two, three thousand shanix a pop, I’m guessing? With your level of programming, you probably cost a great deal more than the average Companion.”_

_Of all the responses the Pleasurebot could have given, Pharma was not expecting the one he actually received. He watched the bot’s red optics go wide, his jaw practically dropping open, and Pharma swore he could hear the bot’s processors clicking on as everything began to fall into place there._

_“I can **charge** for my services?”_


	25. A Room

“Smokescreen?” Bumblebee’s voice still startled the youngest bot, especially when it chimed directly into his inner audials.

Pausing in his steps down a corridor on C Deck, Smokescreen raised a hand to press his finger against the nearly invisible button at the side of his helm before he responded to Bumblebee’s hail, “‘Sup, Commander?”

“Do you think you could grab the plasma compressor from supply bay six and run it out to Bulkhead in Sector Two? I’m sorry to have to ask you, but you’re the only one besides Ratchet on the ship right now, and he said he’s too busy.”

“Uhh,” Smokescreen blinked, his optics swiveling over to Knock Out, who now stood glaring beside him. The pair had been wandering the decks all afternoon to conduct one final sweep of the ship before Knock Out and the others would depart for Earth tomorrow. So far, Knock Out had managed to recall five more storage compartments, and thus Smokescreen now pulled several crates of Energon along on the MARB behind them. “But I’m supposed to be watching Knock Out?”

“I’ll monitor his GPS coordinates while you’re gone,” Bumblebee’s voice crackled in Smokescreen’s audial. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ll let Ratchet know, too. I know you’ll be quick.”

Smokescreen was still watching Knock Out, who had been in a foul mood the entire day. From the very moment they had set off together, Smokescreen had started in with more questions: “What do Decepticons have for breakfast? How come you never wore the Decepticon badge? Is it true that Soundwave once turned into a _cassette_ player? What _is_ a cassette player, anyway? Did you always have pinstripes on your servos?” but Knock Out was having none of it. His responses had gone from a muttered “I don’t know” to “Shut the frag up, Smokescreen” within minutes, whereupon Smokescreen called him an afthole, and the two had been ignoring each other ever since. Smokescreen did not understand why the mech was being so much more of a jerk this time around, so he was thankful for the chance to get away.

“If you say so, ‘Bee,” Smokescreen said before releasing the button on his helm and narrowing his blue optics to Knock Out. “I gotta run an errand. Bumblebee’s tracking your _every_ move, so don’t try anything while I’m gone.” Smokescreen had expected the ex-‘Con to mock him at that, or to express relief that they were being given the opportunity to take a break from one another, but that was not what he was picking up from Knock Out’s signature at all.

“You’re leaving me alone?” Knock Out’s faceplates instantly switched from a look of contempt to fear, and Smokescreen felt the wave of paranoia roll from his EM field.

“I’ll be right back,” Smokescreen said, still glaring and not understanding why Knock Out was acting so strangely.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I dunno? Twenty klicks?” He scowled at the other mech, now certain that he was up to something.  “You better not try any _slag_ , Knock Out!”

“I won’t!” Knock Out said, desperation now apparent in his vocalizer as he gave a quick glance down the hallway, then back to Smokescreen. “I won’t…Just...just _hurry up_ , alright?”

Smokescreen blinked to Knock Out at the request. The mech had been a gearstick for hours now, like being in Smokescreen’s presence was simply unbearable to him, yet suddenly he _didn’t_ want to be left alone? It made zero sense. “Okay?” Smokescreen said as he raised a brow, and then he leaned backwards before his T-cog kicked in and he transformed into his sportscar alt mode, his tires screeching on the metal floor before he sped away.

Knock Out watched the vehicle drive out of sight and then he quickly glanced behind him. Being alone had become a serious issue since Pharma had cornered him the wash racks, and he did not want a repeat of that incident, especially when he was so close to leaving the planet. Forgetting the MARB completely, Knock Out walked a few paces down the hallway and stopped at the first door he came across. He worked his fingers across the keypad at the doorframe to open the lock, but a warning tone indicated that his code was no longer sufficient.

Glaring at the screen, he shoved his finger at it again with more force than necessary to prompt the vocalizer recognition application. “Initiate override sequence eight nine two,” he said, his optics still shifting back and forth across the empty corridor, and he sighed with relief when the door _finally_ opened to his command. He practically ran into the room and slammed his palm over the keypad and screen on the wall just inside, which caused the door to quickly close and lock behind him.

Knock Out leaned his remaining shoulder tire against the wall and shuttered his optics. He had been getting himself worked up over nothing, at least that’s what he had been trying to convince himself of. Pharma had made his point, and Knock Out had readily accepted it. There was no reason the Seeker Medic should be coming after him anymore and truthfully, he hadn’t. In fact, the mech had been blatantly ignoring him whenever they came within sight of each other, which was fine with Knock Out, but there was always the potential for Pharma to try and corner him again, and it was making him a nervous wreck. He couldn’t _wait_ to finally be on Earth, _away_ from Pharma and any other bot that might suddenly decide to drop in on their home world and blame him for Primus-knows-what. Knock Out was certain that most of their race would want him dead, between him now being considered either a _former_ Decepticon or a _traitorous_ Decepticon, depending on which side you asked.

A single light on the ceiling suddenly clicked on, illuminating the space that Knock Out had known only to be a storage room. When he opened his optics however, he quickly saw that someone had been busy converting it into a workstation.

Erected among the crates of Energon there was now a workbench and long table strewn with various tools and fragments of metal. Upon closer inspection, Knock Out spotted a wide piece of flex-cell pinned to the table, a familiar pattern etched across the plastic surface. Curious, he used his arm to carefully brush the tools and metal scraps to one side, revealing a crudely-drawn blueprint of the Matrix of Leadership. Instantly assuming that all of this belonged to Shockwave, Knock Out could not recall him ever mentioning a project regarding the Matrix, but that didn’t mean a thing, as the mech was as known for his plans and experiments as much as he was for his secrecy surrounding them.

Now giving more attention to the metal scraps, Knock Out carefully picked up one of the pieces between his pointed thumb and forefinger, turning it to the side a bit as he inspected it more thoroughly. It was clear now that they were not scraps, but fragments that had been welded into specific forms, and he almost intuitively set the piece back down onto the blueprint, over the etching that matched its exact shape. Like laying out the pieces of a puzzle, Knock Out carefully placed all the metal fragments back into their respective places, only to notice that many were still missing, even after he had replaced everything he had moved aside. This was obviously a work in progress.

His optics were then drawn to a large tool chest that sat open on the workbench beside the table. There was nothing odd about that, except that the tool chest was not full of tools, but of more newly-minted metal components. Knock Out lifted one of the hollow cylindrical pieces from the box, noting that it was the largest and widest in the container. The other pieces were of the same shape, but in varying sizes. It took Knock Out’s processor a few klicks before he realized what he was holding: Spinal columns. Brand new poured, molded and polished spinal columns.

Never one to be squeamish about frame parts, Knock Out shrugged to himself at the discovery and casually set the thick piece of metal back into the tool chest before he flipped the lid closed, only to find himself staring back at the red Autobot symbol stamped onto the front of it.

Knock Out froze in place, like the eyes of the symbol had caught him red-handed, then he slowly shifted his gaze around the rest of the room, his optic filters dilating wide as he finally became aware of what the storage space actually held: Body parts. The workstation had not been built among the crates of Energon that used to be stored there, those were nowhere to be seen. All of the crates and containers that sat open around the room held internal frame parts, everything from cable lines to alternators to fuel tanks and socket joints. By the looks of it, the crates were either in the process of being packed or unpacked, it was difficult to tell one way or the other.

As he now slowly gaped at all of the brand-new parts that he would have literally killed for during the war, Knock Out suddenly took notice of a faint red glow coming from the back of the room. Stepping around some of the taller stacks of containers, he spotted one single crate shoved into the corner. On top of the closed lid was a red glowlight, the kind used to mark runways on Cybertronian evenings when the luminal fog was too thick for safe landings. Normally glaringly bright, the glowing tip of the rod had dulled considerably, as thought it had been burning for deca-cycles.

There was something else on the crate, too. Knock Out worked his way to the corner of the room then crouched down to be optic level with the box as he peered through the red glow to the rows of small digital photos that were propped up there. Most of them were so old that the pictures on the scratched screens skipped every few nano-klicks, and Knock Out had to stare for a moment at one of them before he recognized the two mechs in the picture.

Optimus and Ratchet, no, _Orion Pax_ and Ratchet looked so young that Knock Out would not have been able to identify them on the street if they walked right past him. Ratchet still looked his usual gruff self, but there was a smirk on his faceplates that Knock Out had never seen before, and Orion, his facemask off for once, was giving whoever had taken the picture a look that suggested he did not want to be photographed, yet he smiled for the camera just the same.

Knock Out suddenly stood and back peddled so fast that he bumped his heels into one of the crates behind him. There were at least fifteen digital photos flickering on the box, every one of them containing a picture of either the same two mechs, or Orion Pax/Optimus Prime alone. And scattered among the picture frames were various odds and ends, moon rocks, bits of metal, a small hand carving of a petro-rabbit, and other trinkets picked up from who knows where, their significance unknown to Knock Out. It was then Knock Out realized, with horror, what sacred space he had just disturbed, and exactly who had created that space. If Prime was watching him now, _surely_ he did not want him to see _this_.

Knock Out practically ran back across the room, his optics still wide as he gave the worktable a final look before he stepped to the exit to unlock the door, which slid open to reveal none other than Ratchet standing in the hallway, scowling at the keypad on the wall that was not accepting his entry code.

The two mechs were so startled by each other that neither acted or spoke a word for several nano-clicks, but then Knock Out felt it, an EM signature so filled with rage that its force caused him to take a step back into the room. He had never seen Ratchet move so fast in his life, not even when the bot was hopped up on Synth-En. Ratchet was inside the room with the door relocked and both hands around Knock Out’s neck in a flash.

“How the HELL did you get _IN HERE!?”_ Ratchet roared as he stalked towards Knock Out, simultaneously pushing him backwards by the grip he had on his throat. All of his previous efforts and attempts to build trust with Knock Out were completely forgotten as Ratchet lost himself to his fury.  He slammed Knock Out’s tire against the back wall beside the worktable, ignoring the pointy-fingered grip on one of his wrists as he brought his face a mere meter from Knock Out’s to yell again. “What the frag are you DOING in here!?”

Knock Out could not speak, not because Ratchet had him by the neck, but because the fear racing through his processor had taken the words right out of his vocalizer. There were likely no words that could save him now anyway, he quickly realized, as a shiver ran through his frame and he felt his knee joints starting to give out. Recent past experience told him Ratchet would not respond well to apologies or begging for forgiveness and Knock Out had never, not _once_ gotten the impression that Ratchet would respond well to anything _else_ he had to offer, such as what he had begrudgingly conceded to with Pharma. There was no making up for crossing the line that had been the threshold of the doorway to this room, and suddenly it hit Knock Out that this party was over. Ratchet was going to kill him, or if he did not do that, he would lock him up in the brig for the rest of his cycles, leave for Earth without him, or worse yet, foist him off onto Pharma. And then the real hell would begin.

Ratchet’s engines were running high as he continued to glare down at Knock Out, who he was all but supporting now as the mech slowly let his back tire roll him down the wall. Ratchet bared his denta as he ground them together, fury still pulsing from his EM field as though it were coming straight from his spark. He was _so_ angry, he was _so_ embarrassed, and he felt _so_ violated by having his _one_ secret space discovered, the _one_ place he had left on this damn planet all to himself that no one else knew about or even cared to go looking for, and Knock Out had just taken _all of that_ away from him.

_“Answer me!”_ Ratchet yelled, unconsciously digging his thumbs even harder into Knock Out’s throat as he tightened his grip, but Knock Out only stared back at him, so petrified that Ratchet realized his optics weren’t even focusing on him at all. Then something caught the light, a little flash between Ratchet’s thumbs, and his gaze was instantly drawn to it. He then realized that his thumbs and fingers were becoming interlaced with the black and white scales of some type of armor plating that had been intricately woven around Knock Out’s neck, and that the flash of metal he could now clearly see was from the purposefully hidden collar there. Ratchet had completely forgotten about that hallmark, and realized that he had not even noticed the elaborate armor plating when he had been making repairs to Knock Out’s frame deca-cycles ago. It had never occurred to him that Knock Out might have made any efforts to hide it, but that _did_ make sense. It wasn’t like he could just take the collar off.

The sudden realization startled Ratchet from his haze of fury and brought him back to reality enough that he instantly regretted what he’d done. He quickly released Knock Out, stepped back several meters, and then began to nervously pace back and forth as he clutched his head in both hands. He was still absolutely livid, but he’d messed up, he knew he’d messed up, and if Optimus were here, he would have been _deeply_ disappointed in his actions. Primus, what if he _was_ here? Ratchet paused in his pacing to blink helplessly over to the little shrine he’d created in the corner, his processors suddenly plagued by the notion that somehow his dead friend was privy to all of this, which was, for Ratchet, a _ridiculous_ thought to have. He simply did _not_ believe in that type of spiritual nonsense, but then again, Optimus was different, he had always been different. That’s what had drawn Ratchet to him in the first place.

Ratchet finally admitted to himself that he was way too stressed out, and he winced and shook his head to try and clear his processor. But Primus dammit, this was _his_ room, with _his_ personal things and _how the_ _frag had Knock Out gotten in here!?_ He cringed at the thought of having to explain _anything_ in this room as he started to pace once more, nervously rubbing a hand over his chin and mouth as he eyed Knock Out with a narrowed gaze.

Knock Out had sunk to his knees the second Ratchet let go of him, catching himself with his hand against the floor to keep himself from falling over completely. He did not look up to Ratchet, but instead tracked his peds stomping back and forth, and he watched as the peds shifted from blocky and white to cloven and silver. Knock Out watched Megatron’s peds pacing up and down the length of the small room and he winced as a shudder ran through his frame, because being _that_ afraid always seemed to physically hurt.

Now the peds came to a stop in front of him, and as Knock Out stared at them, he realized he could not remember what he had done this time to incur Megatron’s wrath, and he therefore did not know what to apologize for. And Primus, why was it so _hot_ in this tiny-aft room?  Knock Out flared all of the plating along his sides wide open as his internal cooling fans clicked on, and he honestly hoped that Megatron would knock him unconscious before his coolant ran too low and he passed out on his own. To do that would be huge sign of weakness, and weakness was not tolerated on this ship, everyone knew that. Knock Out shifted to slump back against the wall as he shuttered his optics and vented heavily in an effort to keep his frame from shutting down, because if there was one thing Megatron hated, it was being denied the opportunity to force a bot to shut down by his own hand.

Knock Out could hear the Decepticon warlord calling his name, telling him to look up at him, but he shook his head and clutched at his faceplates with his hand, shivering again despite the heat. He knew Megatron was simply toying with him now, just looking for an easy shot at his jawline, no doubt. Knock Out assumed his refusal to obey the simple order would finally draw out the hit he knew was coming, but still he felt nothing. After what seemed like ages, when the pain never came, and he no longer heard Megatron’s voice, Knock Out finally dared to peek out through his fingers, yet it was not Megatron he saw sitting on the floor against wall opposite him, but Ratchet. The old Medic had his head in his hands, his own optics shuttered and his elbows resting on his knee joints as he vented a long sigh outward.

Ratchet had stood in front of Knock Out for several klicks, calling his name, trying to get the mech to look up at him, to snap him out of whatever was cycling through his processor, but he was completely unresponsive. Wincing at the realization that he was partially to blame for that, Ratchet had simply sat down on the opposite side of the room, and waited. He briefly considered comming First Aid to request he return from the field, but he quickly decided against it, as that would mean revealing this room to him as well. And while Knock Out knowing its location and contents was certainly upsetting, if First Aid knew, there would be questions, and discussions about things that Ratchet did _not_ want to talk about.

Ratchet had been sitting there with his head in his hands for five klicks now, listening to Knock Out’s armor plates clattering with every tremor and air being forcefully vented through his filters so frequently that Ratchet was sure the mech was going to cause himself to offline if he didn’t stop it soon. Venting a heavy sigh of his own, Ratchet eventually looked back up, lifting both brows to the red optics looking back at him from behind parted fingers. “Are you alright?” Ratchet asked, for the third time.

With that question, Knock Out suddenly remembered what he was really doing in that room, and what he had come across, and how very, _very_ angry Ratchet was with him, and he quickly pulled in all of his limbs to draw himself into the corner where the worktable met the wall, his optics still wide with fear. “I’m sorry!” he said, despite knowing it would do no good. “This used to be a storage room!”

“Knock Out, _are you alright?”_ Ratchet repeated, trying to force concern through his EM field, but it was difficult due to the anger that was still simmering there.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Knock Out did not mean to whimper those words, but that’s how they came out as he hunched his shoulders and buried his head under his arm and against his drawn legs.

“Well you don’t look it. I kept calling your designation, I was standing right in front of you. It was like you didn’t even _see_ me.”

“I’m sorry,” Knock Out’s voice muffled against his frame, and he suddenly realized that sitting there, he looked and sounded just as pitiful as First Aid had that night in the cave. Primus, he was so pathetic.

Ratchet had not moved from his spot against the opposite wall, though his scowl was still set in place as he spoke. “I put a new access code on this door last stellar-cycle. _How did you get in?”_

“I added vocal recognition override commands to all of the storage rooms on the ship, years ago,” Knock Out replied as he panted through another series of vents. Now that it seemed Ratchet only wanted to talk and not kick his aft, the fear was finally leaving him.

“Why?”

Knock Out could not help the short laugh that escaped his lips at Ratchet’s question, despite the catalycin that had been coursing through his system now coming to an abrupt halt, which left him feeling suddenly weak and nauseas. His reasoning behind the override commands was simply too ironic for the moment at hand. “They’re a good place to hide things.”

Ratchet nodded to that before he eyed the floor between his peds, raising his hand to pinch his fingers on the bridge of his olfactory. “Listen,” he said as he winced, then eyed Knock Out once more, “I’m sorry I…went after you…the way that I did. I shouldn’t have done that,” and he held Knock Out’s gaze when the mech finally looked up at him again, “but you really pissed me the _frag_ off by being in here.”

“I _know_ ,” Knock Out said, his vocalizer strained as he covered his optics with his hand, “I know I did. I’m sorry. I was _leaving_ ,” he dared to look up and across the room to the far corner then, to the crate full of photos and the dim glowlight. “As soon I realized what you…what was _in_ here…I was leaving.” And then something struck Knock Out’s processor that now seemed so blatantly obvious that he was ashamed the thought had never occurred to him before. He let his hand drop to his side as he blinked back to Ratchet with a look of shock. He shouldn’t be asking, he knew he shouldn’t, but he could not help it, if not for his unconscious desire to have at least _something_ in common with the older bot than for curiosity’s sake alone. “Ratchet, was he your Conj—”

“ _No!”_ Ratchet interrupted before the word even left Knock Out’s vocalizer, and he watched the other mech startle as the yell. Ratchet sighed again, muttering as he pressed his palms to his shuttered optics. “…He was my _Amica_.”

Ratchet’s admission now held Knock Out’s attention more than his fear of angering him again. “But…I _saw_ you when…At the Well when he…You just _stood_ there! You watched him give himself up and you just _stood_ there. Weren’t you _dying_ inside? Didn’t you feel him… _leaving_ you?” The bonds between Amica Endura were not as strong as the bonds between Conjux Endura, but still, Knock Out knew Ratchet had to have felt _something_ as Optimus Prime became one with the AllSpark.

“Of _course_ I did!” Ratchet growled, setting his hands at his sides to glare at Knock Out again. This was exactly why he _hadn’t_ commed First Aid, he didn’t want to have this discussion with _anyone_ , and here he had assumed that there was no way Knock Out would have picked up on anything or put any of the pieces together. The fact that he had apparently greatly underestimated the ex-‘Con in that regard made this all-the-more embarrassing.

“How did you not…But you didn’t even…” Knock Out could not finish his sentence as he now wondered if it was just _him_ who was the overly-emotional pansy-aft, as Megatron had so frequently pointed out. He could not believe the stoicism he now realized he had witnessed that day at the Well, or how Ratchet had been able to maintain his sanity this long.

Ratchet offered no explanation for his lack of a response that day. Instead he raised a hand to point a finger at Knock Out as he spoke, his anger rising again, “You listen to me, Knock Out. You don’t tell a _spark_ about this room, you understand? Tell _no one!”_

“I understand,” Knock Out nodded furiously, as he tried to sink behind his own knee plates, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he watched Ratchet warily as the mech buried his faceplates into both hands once more, but Knock Out quickly took that opportunity to glance to the worktable at his right, now spotting its lower shelf from his current seated position on the floor. He was expecting more frame parts there, except that he suddenly found himself staring into the lightless optic-sockets of a partially-constructed cranium with a _very_ familiar-looking facemask. Knock Out’s optics went wide as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, and he could not stop staring at the two dark, empty chambers as he quietly spoke, “You’re trying to bring him back….”

“This discussion is over,” Ratchet snapped as he got back up onto his peds as quickly as his old frame would allow.

“ _Ratchet_ ,” Knock Out clutched his still-shaking hand to his chest plates as his sudden sympathy for the old Medic ran so deep it hurt his spark, for he’d had the same, grief-induced delusions about trying to bring Breakdown back. That had been the plan all along, except that he’d gotten a little too overzealous in torturing Silas; he’d enjoyed watching the human suffer too much to kill it immediately, and then he’d let Starscream badger him into injecting it with Dark Energon, and once Breakdown’s frame turned Terrorcon, there was no going back. The body was ruined, contaminated and unfit to carry a spark. Megatron made him burn it in the Nemesis incinerator and then eject the molten remains out into space in a biohazard containment pod.

Despite the overabundance of studies conducted on the matter of spark retrieval by scientists and clergy alike, very little was understood about how a spark was reanimated, though several of those theories revolved around keeping a piece of the spark owner’s original frame intact. And although none of those theories had been proven, Knock Out had lost all hope of recovering Breakdown’s spark from the afterlife the day he watched that containment pod float away from the Nemesis.

“ _Never_ speak of this again!” Ratchet roared down to Knock Out one final time. “You hear me!? _Never!”_ He held Knock Out’s gaze as the bot startled and stared back at him, but suddenly pale cleanser seeped from the corner of Ratchet’s left optic, and he quickly looked away, turning his back to Knock Out as he raised his hands to cover his face once more.

Knock Out winced at the yelling, but seeing Ratchet break down right in front of him was far more shocking. Holy slag, the mech _did_ have feelings. Knock Out felt instantly horrible for him, as though he didn’t already. “I won’t, I swear it! I’m sorry!” he said as he watched Ratchet from his spot on the floor. “I’m _so_ sorry, Ratchet, I _mean_ that!” but even as he spoke, he recalled Pharma reminding him that his words meant nothing, and he then resigned himself to the fact that Ratchet would not believe him, no matter how hard he tried to convey any amount of sympathy.

Ratchet vented a few deep cycles as he wiped the back of his servo across his shuttered optics a few times, then held a finger against the side of his helm to open a hailing frequency. “Smokescreen,” he said, and paused until the younger bot acknowledged him, “I need Knock Out to assist me with something for the rest of the cycle. Report back to Bumblebee for any additional tasks.”

Knock Out’s optics went wide to the mech standing over him. _No._ _Nonono,_ hadn’t Ratchet said he was _sorry_ for attacking him? Couldn’t Ratchet see that _he_ was _just_ as sorry for having discovered this room? Why was he keeping Smokescreen away, then? What “assistance” was he suddenly looking for? Was this all a set-up to lull Knock Out into a false sense of security to convince him Ratchet was trustworthy when he actually wasn’t at all? Knock Out could not _believe_ how quickly he had fallen for that one. It was the damn emotions, he had fallen for them like a sucker, like he _always_ did. He felt his spark sink into the pit of his fuel tanks as he ducked under his arm again and whimpered, “What are you gonna do to me?”

“What?” Ratchet said as he blinked down to Knock Out, not understanding where this new wave of fear was coming from. “ _Do_ to you? _Nothing!_ Primus, I’m just going to take you back to your cell, you’re a shaking mess. I thought you could use a recharge,” Ratchet winced as he watched Knock Out start to tremble with fear again, and he silently berated himself for it. He realized he had just blown nearly two stellar-cycles of trust-building, and now he was going to have to start all over again. Primus, he was no good at this. “Does that sound like a good idea?” he offered down to Knock Out, who peered up at him.

“Can I come back to the medbay with you instead? I don’t…” Knock Out paused, his gaze shifting back and forth as he tried to choose his words carefully, “I just don’t want to be down there right now.”

“Alright,” Ratchet said, not questioning the other mech’s reasoning as he watched Knock Out climb back up to his peds, but he blinked at the now familiar reflection of light coming from the bot’s neck. “Your armor,” Ratchet pointed slowly, and Knock Out froze like a deer in the headlights, “around your neck. It’s out of place. I’m sorry, that’s my fault,” Ratchet said, and he would have offered to try and fix it himself, but he didn’t dare make a move towards Knock Out right then.

Knock Out quickly brought his hand up to his neck and ran it along the cables there to get a sense of where the gaps in the plating had opened up, then combed the scales back into place with his sharp fingers before giving Ratchet a questioning look.

“It’s good,” Ratchet nodded, then turned and headed back out into the corridor. 

Knock Out followed, though he paused at the panel on the wall outside the door to and tap at the screen a few times to activate the vocalizer recognition sequence. He had no intention of returning to this storage room _ever_ again, and he wanted Ratchet to understand that.

“Delete override sequence eight nine two and restore previous entry code.”


	26. A Reunion

The worry and stress caused by nearly three months of not knowing the fate of his Cybertronian friends all disappeared the moment Rafael heard the thump of giant metal footsteps and felt the ground vibrate under his own feet as he watched a series of tall forms materialize through the swirling haze of the Spacebridge. Those three months had been painfully long, the longest of Rafael’s _life_ , so when Agent Fowler called him one morning in late September, he had been so excited to see the man’s name pop up on his cell phone that he’d nearly dropped it in his haste to answer, but the news Agent Fowler gave had been bitter-sweet.

Standing inside the hangar of Unit E between Jack and Agent Fowler now, Rafael suddenly realized how horribly sad this reunion actually was, and that the group of bots emerging from the Spacebridge would not, ever again, include Optimus Prime. As a lump started to grow in his throat, Rafael gave a casual glance to the two men standing on either side of him and quickly noted that _they_ did not appear to be on the verge of tears, so he figured he had better not be either, and he shoved his hands into his jean pockets as he blinked back to the Spacebridge and tried to force a smile back onto his face.

Ratchet stepped through the portal first, and though he was smiling as he gave a wave and a nod to their group, even from the distance their height differences created Rafael could see new sets of lines creasing the protoskin under Ratchet’s eyes that made him look even older than before. And though Ratchet appeared to walk with his usual gait, Rafael swore he heard a new creaking sound coming from somewhere inside mech’s frame as he stowed the MARB he had brought, stacked with empty crates, off to the side of the Bridge before tromping towards them.

“Welcome back, Autobots,” Agent Fowler said, the tone of his voice suggesting that he was all business as usual, and he offered Ratchet a solemn nod.

“Agent Fowler,” Ratchet returned the nod, then shifted his smile to Jack and Rafael. “It’s good to see all of you again.”

Rafael tilted his head back as far as he could to try and watch Ratchet’s reaction to being back at the old base, but his attention was quickly stolen by the sound of the portal’s waves breaking open again. The teenage voice inside of Rafael that had been telling him to act cool about this moment was instantly drowned out by the kid voice that told him to run towards the black and yellow mech that stepped out of the vortex and throw his arms around Bumblebee’s leg despite the risk of being crushed to death by the gigantic ped, and that’s exactly what he did. “’Bee!”

“Raf!” Bumblebee froze beside the Spacebridge the second he spotted the smaller being running at him, having learned years ago to always watch where the humans were going once they were on the move. He slowly crouched down to offer an open hand and smiled at the familiar yet slight weight of a human standing on his palm as Rafael climbed on. “Whoa, look at you! You got so _tall!”_ said the mech that stood six meters high to the five-foot human.

“Ha, yeah right! Welcome back” Rafael embraced one of Bumblebee’s fingers in a hug as much as to anchor himself as Bumblebee stood back up to his full height.

Jack had started to reach a hand out to stop Rafael from running. He was too used to keeping track of Rafael after so many years, it was still hard to remember the kid was now a teenager. In the end, Jack sighed and let his hand drop back to his side, offering his own smile to Bumblebee as the bot approached. “Long time no see, ‘Bee,” he said, though he kept gazing at the Spacebridge hopefully. He did not want to offend his favorite Scout-turned-Warrior, but he was far more interested in the return of _his_ bot, and he was already growing impatient. “Where’s Arcee?”

“She’ll be along later this evening, with the Vehicons,” said Ratchet.

Still clinging to Bumblebee’s fingers, Rafael again turned towards the wavering vortex of the Spacebridge as First Aid stepped through the aqua-tinted light, pulling another MARB of mostly empty crates behind him, which he parked beside the other.

“Well, it’s about time you all came back!” Agent Fowler said as he crossed his arms and looked between three of the nine bots that had caused him enough grief and annoyance throughout his lucrative career that they had probably cut years from his lifespan, though he had found that once they were gone, he had missed them, in their own special alien mechanical race sort of way. “The place hasn’t been the same without ya.”

First Aid smiled down to Agent Fowler and Jack as he offered a wave, then blinked to Rafael in Bumblebee’s hand as he moved closer. “Primus, you’re _huge!”_

“I’ve only grown an inch!” Rafael laughed as he grinned to First Aid. “You haven’t been gone _that_ long!”

“I know, but an inch still seems like a big difference on a human,” said First Aid before he looked over to Jack. “I think you got bigger, too! How old are you now, twenty-five or something?”

“I’m nineteen!”

First Aid chuckled to that, knowing perfectly well how old the human was. “No Miko?”

“Her parents won’t let her leave the house until she applies for college,” Jack said as he rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking _goes_ to college, just _applies_ to one. I guess she hasn’t been doing much since we graduated from Jasper High,” he shrugged.

First Aid smiled to that, as Miko’s hatred of all things educational was well known. “That sounds about right,” he said, then turned to glance back at the Spacebridge expectantly.

Following First Aid’s gaze, Rafael did not immediately recognize the last bot to step out of the portal. He had to stare hard and adjust his glasses before he realized that the mech with the tarnished red armor and the missing servo was Knock Out. Even as Rafael tightened his grip around Bumblebee’s fingers upon seeing the Decepticon, Bumblebee curled his hands together and brought them against his chest in an instinctual protective gesture of the human he held there. Old habits were hard to break, even with all things considered.

Clearing his vocalizer to put an end to the sudden silence that permeated the hangar on Knock Out’s arrival, Bumblebee quickly turned to Jack and Agent Fowler. _“*Ahem*_ You all remember Knock Out, right? He’s with us now,” Bumblebee said as he managed a smile, then turned back to the ex-‘Con as he pointed with his free hand. “Knock Out, this is Agent Fowler, and Jack, and this,” he glanced down to the human in his hand, “is Rafael.”

Rafael watched from behind the safety of Bumblebee’s fingers as Knock Out’s eerie red optics flicked from one named human to the next, though when that penetrating gaze finally fell on _him_ , he swore the ‘Con stared at him the longest.

Ratchet let exactly three nano-klicks of silence pass before he glared to Knock Out. “You can at least say ‘ _Hello’_ , Knock Out,” he grumbled as he set his hands on his hips.

“Hello, humans,” Knock Out muttered as he pulled his gaze from Rafael and turned his scowl elsewhere.

First Aid offered a smile to the Earthlings, though he knew they could not see it behind his facemask, then he moved away from Bumblebee and over to Knock Out’s side. “C’mon, Knock Out, I’ll show you to your…quarters,” he did not hide his wince very well at his last statement before he started off across the hangar and down a wide hallway.

Rafael was silently thankful as the two paired off and Knock Out appeared to willingly follow First Aid without complaint, though he froze again when the ‘Con glanced back to stare directly at him one final time, and Rafael swore he saw the bot’s faceplates suddenly shift into a look of complete sadness before he quickly turned away to trail after First Aid and disappear down the corridor.

“Where are you putting him?” Bumblebee asked Ratchet, still clutching Rafael in a hand, and Rafael was quick to note that his bot did not ask the question until First Aid and Knock Out were well out of earshot.

“In the holding cell, of course,” Ratchet replied as he moved back towards the MARBs.

Rafael glanced up, watching Bumblebee shake his head to Ratchet’s words as he narrowed his blue optics.

“What?” Ratchet quickly countered, catching that look. “Where _else_ should I put him, Bumblebee!?”

“Primus, Ratchet, he’s not _going_ anywhere! Give him a regular room!” Bumblebee snapped back as he gestured down the hallway opposite to the one First Aid and Knock Out had taken.

“Around the _humans?”_ Ratchet said as he glared now. “No way. He could still be a danger to them, or are you already willing to take the chance that he isn’t?”

“You really think he’d go after them? _Really_?” said Bumblebee, unaware that Rafael had gone stark still in his palm.

Ratchet grumbled and sputtered for a moment at the question before he came up with an excuse. “He’s not _used_ to being around them! He might _step_ on one! You know how they can get underfoot!” he said before he quickly raised a giant grey hand to Jack and Agent Fowler who stood below him. “No offence.”

“None taken,” Jack replied, though he had been flicking his gaze between the two Autobots as they argued back and forth.

Rafael too had instantly picked up on the agitation between the two bots. He did not need the ability to read EM fields to sense that there was obvious tension occurring between them both, a tension which had _never_ been there before. And although as a human he could not sense Bumblebee’s signature, Rafael knew the bot was getting angry by the way his hand was tensing up, his dark gray fingers slowly closing in around Rafael like a cage, which promptly caused Rafael to knock on Bumblebee’s chestplates with a seemingly tiny fist. “Uhh…can you let me down now? Please?”

“Alright, _well!_ ” Agent Fowler clapped his hands together as he spoke up, attempting to break the tension he also sensed, “I’ve pulled all your inventory logs and gathered up all your-- Oh, for the love of Homeland Security!” he yelled as the cell phone at his hip suddenly interrupted him with the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. He plucked the phone from its casing and eyed the screen before he sighed. “I’ve gotta take this, excuse me,” he muttered, and then quickly moved towards a door at the back of the hangar.

Bumblebee had been quick to heed Rafael’s request, instantly lowering his hand to the floor so that the human could hop from his palm, though he did smile to Fowler as he took his leave from the group. “He hasn’t changed a bit, I see.”

Ratchet eyed Fowler as well before he rolled his optics and turned to start tugging one of the MARBs behind him. “I’ll be in the medbay. Comm me when he gets back.”

“He hasn’t changed a bit, either,” said Jack as he looked after Ratchet, then he turned back to give a questioning look to Rafael as he all but ran back to Jack’s side.  The two were used to seeing Ratchet bicker with the other Autobots, but neither had ever heard Bumblebee use such a tone with anyone before. Then again, Jack realized, they had never really had much time to get to know Bumblebee’s actual voice. Maybe that biting edge was normal?

Bumblebee snapped out of the glare he had been sending Ratchet’s way and blinked back down to the children, suddenly aware of the almost fearful looks they were giving him, and he vented a sigh. “I’m sorry, guys. It’s just –”

“It’s okay,” Jack quickly raised a hand as he offered a faint smile. “I’m sure it’s been hard for everyone.”

“Yeah,” Rafael finally piped up, shoving his hands into his pockets again as he eyed the floor. “Fowler told us about Optimus, so…” he did not have the heart or actual need to say more, as that lump returned to his throat.

Bumblebee’s optics shifted from one boy to the next, his spark suddenly heavy with guilt that he had not been the one to break the bad news to them, yet he was still able to smile as he watched the pair. “That’s no excuse for me to raise my voice.” He gave a sweeping glance around the hangar before starting for the door. “Let’s go outside for a klick, I’ve missed Earth’s fresh air.”

Jack and Rafael exchanged glances once more before Jack shrugged and headed after Bumblebee, Rafael quick to follow as Bumblebee flipped the lever at the exit to engage the wide bay doors to slowly roll open.

As soon as his frame could clear the door, Bumblebee stepped outside, inhaling the air deeply and cycling it through his ventilation systems, which he released with a sigh as his optics scanned the horizon and were instantly drawn to the wide, expansive road that stretched as far as he could see. He silently lamented the fact that he could not celebrate their return by charging down the highway as fast as his wheels could carry him.

Rafael stepped up beside Bumblebee’s right leg, his head not even reaching the mech’s knee joint, despite that extra inch of growth, and he pulled the zipper of his hoodie up against the cold morning air. Noting Bumblebee’s wistful look to the highway, he instantly perked up. “Wanna go for a drive, ‘Bee?”

Ignoring the question for now, Bumblebee gave Rafael a sad sort of smile before he turned and trudged a few meters to the left, the ground shaking under the humans’ feet with his every step before he maneuvered himself into a seated position on the gravel. Rafael was not certain, but he thought he saw the mech wince slightly with the action, as though it had pained him to do so.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to tell you about…everything,” Bumble started, though he paused to stare out across the parking lot for a moment before looking back to Jack and Rafael as they stepped closer to him. “When Agent Fowler told you what happened with Optimus, what did he say?”

“He said that Optimus…went into the Well of AllSparks. To save Cybertron,” said Jack, who now raised a brow in suspicion. “Is that not true?”

“It _is_ true,” Bumblebee confirmed, looking between Jack and Rafael as he tried to explain it all in simple terms, though not so simple that he might run the risk of insulting their intelligence. “He had to sacrifice himself. He’d merged the Matrix inside him with the AllSpark to defeat Unicron so….in order to return the AllSpark to the Well, it was the only way. When he did that, all of the sparks stored in the Well shot up out of it into the sky and replanted themselves across the planet and the galaxy, and some day those sparks will become new bots. He gave himself up so the rest of us could keep going.”

Ratchet had once bumbled his way through explaining the life-cycle of Transformers to Rafael a few years ago, but it had made very little sense to him back then. “Will Optimus’s spark become a new bot, too?” Rafael asked.

“I don’t know,” Bumblebee said with a smile as he recalled seeing the Prime on the Skybridge in that other realm beyond the living. “Maybe?”

“But he’s not coming back now, as himself?”

“He’s _really_ gone?” Jack asked as well.

Bumblebee nodded to them both, though he looked away in thought as he replied. “Yeah. Yeah, I think this is it. I mean…I’m not gonna pretend I fully understand what happens to a Prime when they become one with the AllSpark but...I dunno,” he eyed them again. “Something just tells me that this is it, that we have to go on without him now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it doesn’t sound like a happy ending,” he tried to offer a comforting smile again, “but in a way, it still is.”

Rafael plucked his glasses from his face and quickly ran the back of arm across his eyes to mop up the tears that were gathering there. He did not know how the other two could be standing there _not_ crying as they talked about the death of someone they all held so dearly, and he was silently jealous of their ability to steel themselves. He thought he had gotten it all out of his system the day Fowler had called to give him the news, but apparently not.

Bumblebee felt his spark sink a bit as he watched Rafael swipe at his eyes, but he continued to smile, and instinctively offered a comforting signature even though he knew the human would not feel it. “It’s okay, Raf, he knew what he was doing. He knew it had to be done.”

“I know,” Rafael muttered as he replaced his glasses, “but it’s still sad.” He shoved his hands back into the pockets of his sweatshirt and scowled at the ground.

Jack again started to reach for Raf to give him a pat on the shoulder, but then he remembered himself at fourteen, how embarrassed _he_ would have been to be crying in front of his friends, and he thought better of it, deciding instead to move on to other things. “What else has been going on since then?” he looked back up to Bumblebee. “Are you rebuilding yet? What happens now?”

“We _are_ rebuilding, yes,” Bumblebee replied. “Once we fixed the comm links, we sent out a message on the universal hailing frequency to let everyone know it was time to come back. It’s been slow going, but every cycle more and more bots have been showing up, so I think we’ll be making some good progress soon.”

Rafael, having finally composed himself, turned back to Bumblebee as well then with a questioning look as he recalled the other things Agent Fowler had mentioned during that phone call. “Fowler said you’re Commander now but…if you are, why did you come back here?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Jack, too, raised a brow to Bumblebee. “Like, don’t you have a planet to run?”

Bumblebee shifted his gaze down to the ground at his left. He was highly hesitant to try and explain why he was back. Ratchet had given him plenty of reasons as to why he would be returning to Earth for a while, but there were other, unspoken reasons that Ratchet had refused to discuss the night he’d come to Bumblebee’s quarters and all but ordered him to return to Earth. “It’s complicated,” he said as he reluctantly looked back to the pair.

“Try us,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes a bit as he crossed his arms. “We’re not kids anymore, y’know,” he flicked his gaze to Rafael for a second, then looked back to Bumblebee. “Mostly.”

“Is something wrong?” Rafael said as he stepped closer to Bumblebee’s right ped, looking suddenly worried. “’Cause something _seems_ wrong.”

“Yeah, you don’t really seem like yourself,” said Jack as he moved closer as well. “What’s going on?”

Bumblebee inwardly winced that the two were able to pick up on any of his current insecurities. He thought he was doing a semi-decent job at covering those up, his momentary quarrel with Ratchet notwithstanding. He glanced down at the two tiny humans peering up at him with concern and tried to calculate how much of a burden it would be to them if he told them everything he suspected the other Autobots were up to, but human emotion was sometimes hard to estimate. He did not want to fill their minds with his mere speculations as to why he was back here, that would only sow mistrust among the group, and he did not want to put ideas into their heads when he had no real, tangible proof that possibly, just maybe, Ultra Magnus was trying to clear him out and appoint himself as Commander instead, or maybe he had in mind another bot that he knew was on their way back to Cybertron? Then again, it wasn’t like Ultra Magnus didn’t have good reason to want to do that…

Wringing his four-fingered hands together for several seconds, Bumblebee finally vented a sigh and explained what had happened, reasoning that the two boys were old enough to come to their own conclusions once he laid out the facts. He told them about the race, how he’d fallen off the Skyway and how Knock Out saved him. He told them about Wheeljack and the rocket. He told them how his T-cog could not be saved, and how horrible he felt about not being able to participate in the rebuilding of Cybertron due to his need to recover from his injuries. He did _not_ tell them about dying, or speaking to Prime, or of anything that he saw and experienced from Knock Out’s perspective afterward. He did not tell them what Knock Out had claimed to have seen, either. And he did _not_ mention the tiny sensation of loss that had been slowly penetrating his mind just a little bit more and more as each cycle passed, that nagging reminder that a key part of who he was as a Transformer was missing.

“So, that’s that, I guess. Ultra Magnus has taken over command of Cybertron, for now,” Bumblebee concluded, blinking as be became suddenly aware that as he’d been talking, he’d absentmindedly dug a two-foot trench into the ground by running one finger along it in the same spot repeatedly. He hurriedly wiped the dirt back into place, knowing Agent Fowler hated to have the base landscaping looking less than perfect.

“No _T-cog?”_ Rafael gaped, and he placed a hand against Bumblebee’s shin plates. “’Bee…What are you gonna _do?”_ No wonder the mech had avoided his offer to go driving ten minutes ago.

 _“Again?”_ Jack threw his hands into the air in a shrug. “Don’t you guys keep spares? It _really_ seems like you oughta be keeping spares of those things!”

“It’s okay,” Bumblebee sighed, though his words did not sound very convincing, even to him. “Really, it’s okay...It’ll all work out,” he shrugged as he tried to keep his doorwings from drooping and revealing his true feelings on the matter. “Someone _will_ have spare,” he looked down to Jack. “There’s ships full of bots landing on Cybertron all the time now. Someone will have one.”

“What about Ratchet’s? He offered his to you the last time,” said Jack, though he paused when Bumblebee quickly shook his head.

“I’m _not_ doing that. I shouldn’t have even agreed to it the first time, even though he ended up not going through with it. It’s not right for me to take one from someone else. He needs his T-cog as much as any bot.”

His hand still on Bumblebee’s armor plating, Rafael glanced over his shoulder to Jack with a face that said “Oh scrap” to the whole situation, knowing that Bumblebee could not see him, before he pasted on a smile as he looked back up to the bot again. “I’m sure someone will have a spare, ‘Bee, just like you said…How long are you guys gonna be here, then?”

“A few stellar…er… _months,”_ Bumblebee replied, correcting his words to fit the Earthen vernacular. “We need to mine some Energon and gather up any remaining supplies we left here.”

“Wait, you’re closing this place down?” Jack said as he crossed his arms.

“No, no,” Bumblebee shook his head, “that’s not what I mean. We just need to gather all the resources we can and get them to Cybertron, that’s all. We’re not shutting anything down here permanently, I promise.”

Jack and Rafael exchanged silent looks once more before Rafael glanced upwards again. “You know you’ll always have a place here on Earth, ‘Bee.”

“I know,” Bumblebee said as he returned Rafael’s smile before he looked out towards the desert landscape again. “This will always be our home away from home.”


	27. A Release

The holding cell in Unit E could use some work. The recharge slab in it was twice the size of the ones in the brig on the Nemesis, but the actual square footage of the space around it was much smaller, so that if a bot was not actually laying down on the slab, the cell was very cramped, with very little space to walk and certainly not enough room to transform, unless one was a minibot. And although the cell was clean, it was several feet underground, on the first floor of the hangar’s sublevels, and Knock Out very quickly noted that the wide metal pipes that ran the length of the ceiling overhead were covered in both old and new water stains, their surfaces slick with damp and corrosion in several spots. 

Knock Out was surprised to find that the bars of the cell were not the atypical Cybertronian glow bars of every other brig or prison, but were instead made of iron beams four feet in diameter that dropped down from the ceiling into giant holes in the metal flooring once the magnetized locks were activated via an electro-magnetic circuit board on the wall. To the humans, the gigantic iron bars towered over them like cylindrical skyscrapers, and Knock Out, although he had first questioned their structural integrity, soon realized after several attempts to push, pull, and shake one bar after another that they were actually quite effective at keeping a weaponless Transformer held captive. Likewise, there was something far more ominous in hearing the _*clang!*_ of the metal bars slam shut than the comparatively soothing hum of the glow bars, as though the sound of the metal locks brought some sort of finality to his being truly imprisoned there.

None of these differences bothered Knock Out today, however, as the second he was certain that he was alone and as safe as he figured he was ever going to be on the base, he finally allowed his strained sensors to power down as he fell into recharge, though he made certain to first heighten the sensitivity of his proximity alert system before doing so. His processors shut down the moment his helm hit the slab, and for the first time in several cycles, he was blessed with dreamless slumber.

It was that heighted proximity alert that caused Knock Out to jolt awake some seven hours later, his audials immediately registering the sound of metal footsteps walking his way. Instantly annoyed at being woken up, he quickly checked his chronometer before he pushed himself up from the recharge slab to stand, ready to face whoever had decided to bother him. His optics narrowed in suspicion when Bumblebee finally came into view on the other side of the bars. He had figured the mech would have given him at least _one evening_ to himself before he started coming down to his cell to pester him into conversation, but apparently that was too much to ask.

_“Finally,”_ Bumblebee said as he entered a code onto the wall panel, his blue optics tracking the movements of the thick metal bars as they sank into the floor panels. “You’ve been powered down all cycle. I’ve walked by here three times already and you were always offline. Let’s go back to the main bay,” he said as he gestured with a hand for Knock Out to follow him.

Knock Out gave no indication of how paranoid Bumblebee’s words made him. _Three times!?_ The mech had walked past him _three times_ and he hadn’t woken up until now? The very thought that his guard had been down for so long despite his attempts to increase the range of his proximity scans made his armor plating prickle for a moment before he shook himself free of his nerves and offered Bumblebee a glare. “Why?”

Bumblebee paused in his steps to blink back at Knock Out, surprised by the look he was being given, but then again this was not the first time he had seen Knock Out glaring and angry for no apparent reason. “Because everyone’s here now,” he said, “Arcee and the Vehicons, and Fowler and June and the kids. I thought you might want to hang out with us?”

“‘ _Hang out’_ with you?” Knock Out scoffed, not taking so much as a step outside the cell. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because they rightfully _hate_ me, and I’m not particularly fond of _them_ , either.”

Bumblebee could not fault Knock Out there, but that was all the more reason to start rebuilding those bridges. “Then consider this a chance to start over?” he said as he shrugged.

“I don’t _like_ organics,” said Knock Out, and the scowling look he gave to Bumblebee clearly indicated that the Autobot Commander ought to have a _very_ good understanding as to why.

Knowing exactly what Knock Out was implying, Bumblebee offered a signature of sympathy, but he was not willing to let anything go unspoken. “They’re not MECH, Knock Out. They’re not like that, not at _all._ MECH was the exception and _not_ the rule when it comes to humans. You _know_ that, right?” Bumblebee said with a look that suggested he wanted Knock Out to fully understand that, if he didn’t already. He did not want the ex-‘Con to associate Agent Fowler, June, or the children with the likes of Silas and his heartless mercenaries. 

“I don’t care who or what they affiliate themselves with, I don’t want to ‘hang out’ with _any_ of them,” _and you can’t make me,_ Knock Out wanted to say, though he kept that part to himself as he blatantly looked away from Bumblebee’s gaze.

Bumblebee pointed a squared finger down the hallway. He did not expect Knock Out to simply take his word for it that these humans were different, but he _did_ expect Knock Out to give them a fair chance, so that he could see it for himself. “Every human up there risked their lives to save Cybertron as much as any of us did. They’re a part of this team. The Autobots have an alliance with these humans and Unit E, which means you do too. You _are_ still interested in becoming an Autobot, aren’t you?”

Knock Out glanced back to Bumblebee at that, though his optics remained narrowed. “Yes, but—”

“I’m not going let you hide down here the whole time, y’know,” Bumblebee did not let Knock Out finish his sentence. Whatever the other bot’s excuse was, it was irrelevant. Bumblebee was determined to integrate Knock Out into the team, and if that meant forcing him into uncomfortable social situations, so be it. “You’ll have to interact with them at some point, _all_ of them.”

“I’m not _hiding!”_ Knock Out gaped at the accusation. “Primus, we’ve only just arrived! Give me a _break!”_ It was a lame excuse for him to remain in the cell, he knew that, but it was far better than the truth: That the past few cycle’s events had him feeling like his sanity was hanging by a wire.

Bumblebee narrowed his gaze on Knock Out, though it was out of concern and not anger. He had taken Smokescreen’s word seriously when the mech had approached him last cycle to mention Knock Out’s bizarre behavior and irritable demeanor, which Bumblebee found odd, as he could have sworn he heard the ex-‘Con _laughing_ in the medbay the cycle before that. Bumblebee continued with his hard stare for a few more seconds, as though trying to make up his mind before he finally spoke. “Alright,” he vented a sigh, then popped open the subspace under the armor of his left chest plate to remove a data pad, which he offered to Knock Out. “Here.”

Knock Out blinked to the pad as he took it from Bumblebee’s hand with his own. “What is this?”

“It’s my copy of the Autobot Code,” Bumblebee said as he stepped back out into the hallway and touched the wall panel. There was a loud _*clack*_ of the locks disengaging before the metal bars slowly rose up from the floor between the two mechs with twisting motions, and a hollow _*clang*_ as the locks fell back into place once the bars settled into the holes in the ceiling. “The unabridged version.”

“ _What?”_ Knock Out had to step to the side in order to see Bumblebee through the bars now, and gave him an exasperated look. “But _I_ didn’t lose that race!”

“No, we _both_ did,” Bumblebee said, and he could not help the look and signature of disappointment he sent Knock Out’s way before he turned and started down the hallway. “Comm me if you change your mind or…for _any_ reason, really. My line is always open to you.”

Knock Out blinked again as an internal message from Bumblebee popped up on his HUD, one that would allow him access to the other bot’s personal comm line, if he chose to accept it. Instead of doing so however, Knock Out glared past his inner display to watch Bumblebee’s departing frame, but he instantly took note of the way the other mech moved, how he’d stepped off with his right ped, and the tense way in which he carried himself that indicated reduced flexion in his spinal strut, all telltale signs of a missing T-cog.

The wave of guilt that washed over Knock Out was far greater than the lingering EM field of Bumblebee’s disappointment. With a vented sigh, Knock Out slumped back down to sit on the recharge slab and stare at the data pad in his hand before he shook his head and tossed it aside on the slab beside him. He reminded himself that this was better, far, _far_ better than being forced to remain on the Nemesis now that Pharma was there, yet somehow this was already turning out to be difficult in its own way.

Knock Out internally shifted the still-lingering message from Bumblebee off to the side of his HUD without accepting it, though the icon remained in his peripheral. “My comm line is always open to you”? Yeah, right.  _Did you know your CMO thinks he can rebuild your dead, fearless leader who also happens to be his Amica Endura, Bumblebee? Or maybe you’d like to explain why the Autobots still put their faith in a Seeker Medic that likes to force himself on his patients and threaten them with a chainsaw?_ Yes, those conversations would go over _very_ well with the Autobot Commander, who would of course believe _every word_ Knock Out said.

Heaving another vented sigh, Knock Out pushed his sarcastic thoughts aside, setting his hand over his helm as he leaned forward, closing his optic shutters at the sudden jolt of pain in his spark, as though Primus was just cruel enough to take this opportunity to remind him that all of this would be so much easier to handle if Breakdown was there with him.

 

June Darby attempted to hold her head high as she walked stiffly down the vast hallway, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She told herself, again, that this was something she _had_ to do in order to get on with her life, and silently reminded herself to be brave in the face of adversity. Once the thick metal bars of the holding cell were in her sights however, she slowed her pace, her heart pounding in her chest as she now all but crept up to the cell and dared to take a peek inside from where she stood on the opposite side of the hallway.

Perhaps because it was now late in the evening, or perhaps in an effort to conserve energy, the lights in the cell had been turned off, which made it all the more chilling when the pair of red optics sudden sprang to life there among the shadows. June clutched both hands to her chest as she backed away. She was trying desperately not to let fear overtake her senses entirely, but that was proving to be easier said than done. She remained where she was, her body now pressed up against the cold metal wall behind her for what felt like ages before the glowing red optics moved closer, the light from the hallway suddenly illuminating the Decepticon’s entire white face and pointed red helm as it appeared out of the shadows and leaned closer to the bars.

“What do you want, _human?”_ the Decepticon asked, scowling as it watched her.

Her hands still clasped together to keep them from shaking, June swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly gone dry. She was mere seconds away from running down the hall, from giving up completely, when the anger that had been simmering inside her for more than a year now came bubbling back to the surface, and that was where she found the courage to speak again. “When Agent Fowler said the others brought you back with them because you’d turned Autobot,” she said after taking a deep, ragged breath, “I didn’t believe him. And yet, despite seeing you here now, I _still_ don’t believe the turning Autobot part.” Her eyes narrowed then as she tried to steel herself against the penetrating gaze looking down at her. The bars between them should have made her feel safe, but they did not.

“Which one are you, again?”

June blinked to that. It didn’t remember. It didn’t remember _her_ , or what it had _done_ , and that enraged her all the more. Then again, of _course_ it didn’t remember, because tossing humans around like ragdolls was probably a normal, everyday occurrence for Decepticons. Emboldened by another surge of anger, June set her fists on her hips, squaring her shoulders as she glared up at the bot. “I’m June. June Darby, Jack’s mother. You _kidnapped_ me and Agent Fowler that one time and locked us in your _trunk!?”_ The red optics flicked elsewhere for a moment, and June glared when the Decepticon smiled, as though this were all a big joke.

“Oh, riiiiiiight. _That_ was a good time, wasn’t it?”

“It was terrifying! I _still_ have nightmares about it!” June shouted, but fear leapt up into her throat again as the Decepticon leaned forward some more to set its right arm on its thigh and peer down at its long, sharp fingers as though it were contemplating the need for a manicure.

“I suppose you’re expecting some sort of recompense for your troubles? Well, I don’t have anything to offer you.”

June crossed her arms over her chest as she tried to convince herself that she was just as intimidating to the Decepticon as it was to her. It was not working very well. “How about an apology?” she asked, and she watched the red optics roll upwards at her request.

“Listen, I was under orders to procure that Predacon bone fragment that you _refused_ to hand over. If you had just _given_ it to me the first time I asked, you would have been spared the traumatic experiences that followed.”

“You _ejected_ me and Bill from your back seat mid-transformation! If Wheeljack hadn’t been there to catch us, we would have _both_ been killed!”

“Who’s ‘Bill’?”

“Agent Fowler!”

“Oh. Yes, I _know_ I had to remove you from my internal seating arrangements. Perhaps if you hadn’t tossed the fossil onto the back of that _rail_ car and forced me to –”

“And my _son_!” June yelled as she pointed down the hallway. “You fucking kidnapped my son and took him into outer-Goddamn-space and used his life as a _bargaining_ chip!”

The Decepticon raised one dark brow down to her. “And you think me offering a simple apology for all those things somehow makes up for them?”

“It’s a _start_! It does if you _mean_ it! How the hell can you call yourself an Autobot when you won’t even accept responsibility for your actions!?” June yelled again, placing her hands on her hips once more, and she even dared to take a step forward. She could not believe this bot could be so blasé about harming humans and at the same time try to claim Autobot affiliation. No wonder it was being kept behind bars.

“That _does_ seem to be a reoccurring theme around here,” the mech said as he glanced away in thought, tapping one pointy finger against the thin red cleft of metal than ran down the middle of his chin.

“Wow, you’re a _horrible_ being, you know that? I don’t know what the hell the Autobots are thinking! You’re _beyond_ redemption! You’re evil! Your pure evil!” June’s rising voice now echoed down the hallway as she pointed down it once more. “You’re not one of _them!_ You’ll _never_ be like them!” But her anger-fueled courage ran dry again as the Decepticon suddenly shifted from its seat on the slab and lowered itself to the floor, its back now leaning against the slab behind it, and June felt the ground vibrate as it sat. It had always been nerve-wracking to June that the giant mechs moved so seemingly slow, yet at the same time covered so much ground with a single step or reach of a hand. She backed herself up against the wall again, quickly glancing to her left and then right, suddenly worried that it was repositioning itself so that it could try to reach out and grab her.

If the bot had been any bigger, it would not have been able to sit in the space between the slab and the bars, but even considering its size, it was forced to brace one foot against the metal columns and draw its other leg up to bend at the knee to fit there. With its full frame now in the light, June noticed for the first time that it was missing an entire arm and much of its upper armor, making it look much more haggard and run-down than the last time she had seen it nearly a year ago. That did not make it look any less frightening however.

“Those are bold words coming from something with such a _tiny mouth_ ,” the Decepticon said, and it narrowed its gaze onto June once more as though studying her. “Don’t you _fear_ me?”

June trembled under that gaze as she clenched her hands together again, but she had made it this far, and she was still alive, and she still had a lot more to say. She had always taught her son to face his fears and she couldn’t very well expect him to do that throughout the rest of his life if she was unwilling to do so herself. Of course, she may have just been completely crazy to be doing this, instead. She had not told a single person or Autobot that she was coming down here. In hindsight, maybe she should have, but it was too late now.

After taking several deep breaths, June spoke again. “When Bill told me you’d come back to Earth with the Autobots, I didn’t even want to come here to see _them,_ because I knew you were in the building,” she said, her own glare returning as she dared to make a confession. “The nightmares that I get? They’re of your eyes. It’s dark, and I’m at the rail yard again, and all I can see is your two glowing red eyes moving closer and closer to me until I can see my reflection in them. And then right when I can feel your hand grabbing me around my waist, that’s when I wake up screaming. So, yes, I am afraid of you,” June bit her lip as she tried to maintain eye contact with the bot, but she found that she could not. She crossed her arms again, her shoulders hunched as she felt suddenly helpless, even after all she had said. Maybe this _was_ a bad idea? Maybe she _was_ crazy? She stared at her sneakered feet for a moment before the realization hit her: Yes. Yes, she _was_ crazy, but she was going to _own_ that craziness. She raised her head once more, blinking at the clarity she suddenly felt.

“No, you know what? _Fuck_ it,” June said, tilting her gaze back up to the Decepticon, who had been sitting silently by. “I take all that back. I’m _done_ letting those memories ruin my _life!_ Fuck you and your stupid war for Cybertron!” she screamed as she stalked closer to the cell and shook a finger up at the bot. “How _dare_ you bring that shit to Earth and drag me and my son into it! We never did a _thing_ to your race, and then you all came here and tried to destroy us! You drilled into our planet and tried to melt our polar icecaps and did God knows what else to our already fragile eco system! And how many humans _died_ for your fucking ‘cause’!? And how many more lives did you _ruin_ by taking away someone they _loved!?_ You killed _hundreds_ of people when you destroyed Jasper!”

Unbeknownst to June, both Agent Fowler and Jack had left the main bay twenty minutes ago in search of her when Jack noticed that she had gone missing from the gathering. Both of them were acutely aware of her apprehension about coming to the base that evening, so it only took one look from Jack to make Bill nod in confirmation that he had noticed her absence as well, and the pair set off in search of her.

Now the two peered out from their hiding place behind a stack of tires in the hallway by the supply cages, their eyes wide as June’s screaming carried down the corridor towards them.

“Oh my God,” Jack whispered as he blinked at what he was hearing, and he finally stood up and started to move, “we have to stop her.”

“Let her go, son,” Bill was quick to lay a hand on Jack’s shoulder and tug him back behind the tires. He didn’t like what he was hearing either, but he knew better than to interrupt her tirade. “She needs this.”

“And then after Jasper your _stupid ship_ went on to New York City and you killed a million more of us!” June yelled, no longer caring that the Decepticon was glaring at her, she was no longer afraid of it. “A fucking _million!”_

“I had _nothing_ to do with _any_ of that!” the bot finally spoke up, raising its own voice. “Primus, I wasn’t even allowed off the _ship!_ I’m a _Medic_ , not a Soldier! I didn’t kill _any_ of those humans!”

“Oh, you’re a _Medic_ , are you?” June said with a snarl. “How many injuries to Decepticons did you have to treat that were caused by _human_ weapons?” she challenged, and when the bot gave her no immediate response, she continued. “Yeah, that’s what I _thought!_ _None,_ right!? Because we’re _defenseless_ against you! Do you know what _I_ do for a living? I work in a hospital. _I’m_ a Medic,” she tapped to her chest, “just like you. I’ve seen firsthand what _Cybertronian_ weapons can do to _human_ s. All those crushed bodies from the buildings you destroyed, all those third-degree burns and missing limbs from your fucking _fusion_ cannons!” she cried, and she had to pause so that she could take a moment to collect herself, and vigorously wipe away the tears that unexpectedly stung her eyes. “Well!” she said when she finally looked back up to the glaring red optics, “Now here we are, almost a year later. And you _lost_ your fucking war. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on now,” she shook her head, “you _still_ lost. So, _no._ I _don’t_ fear you. I did, but not anymore. The war’s over. _I’m_ still alive. And my _son_ is still alive. Jasper is being rebuilt, and things are finally getting back to normal. Life only gets easier for me from here on out,” she said as she shrugged, and in that same instant she felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. But still she narrowed her gaze to the Decepticon in the cell, who she could see was becoming more and more angry by the second. She did not care.

“Things won’t get easier for _you,_ though,” she continued. “No, I think life for _you_ is going to be one long, slow, _painful_ decent towards the ultimate realization that none of _them_ will ever truly accept you,” June said as she pointed down the hallway a final time, “because they all know where you came from, and what you’ve done, and they won’t _ever_ forget it. Oh, they’ll try. They’ll try because they’re Autobots, and Optimus Prime taught them to be kind and merciful and _forgiving,_ but it won’t work. You’re too far gone,” June flicked her gaze up and down the bot’s frame, and she suddenly realized that it actually wasn’t that intimidating at all. “I can see now that you’ll _never_ accept responsibility for your part in everything, because your warped Decepticon brain will never see it any other way. So, they’ll give up on trying with you, lock you in this cell, throw away the key and then you’ll be _all alone,”_ she said, raising both brows to the bot, watching as it mirrored her look, though she was certain she saw fear there as well. “No Autobots. No Decepticons. Just _you,_ alone in here, for the rest of your days, with only _yourself_ to blame. And that’s _exactly_ the kind of existence you deserve.”

June had been watching the Decepticon closely, despite her ranting and raving, and she could tell that it was about to fly into its own rage, judging by the way its entire frame tensed up and it visibly clenched its silver teeth. Good. Let it be angry at her, that meant her words actually meant something.

“Are you _done, human!?”_ the bot yelled back at her from behind the bars, but instead of cowering back in submission, June simply grinned.

“ _Yes_ , I am,” she said with a smirk. “Enjoy your cell. _Alone_.” Then she turned and marched back down the hallway, her head held high once more and her smile confidently in place. And for the first time in months, she felt at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to MissMonnie for helping me figure out how to combine the timelines of the TF Prime Decepticon attack on Jasper, NV with the IDW comic Decepticon attacks on the rest of America.


	28. A Compromising Situation

Jack could not remember the last time he and Arcee had gone for a late-night ride, it must have been months, perhaps nearly a year, so when she suggested they go for a spin after the other bots had finally retired to their berths, and June and Agent Fowler had left to take Rafael home, Jack jumped at the chance. It did not matter to him that it was 2am on a weeknight and the cold, late-September weather of the Nevada desert would make for an uncomfortable ride. On the other hand, Jack didn’t want to freeze his ass off, either.

Unit E kept their supply cages well-stocked, and Jack had been given unrestricted access to them once Agent Fowler had made him, Rafael and Miko “honorary members” of the agency, which meant free use of military-grade equipment (minus the weapons of course), such as the cold-weather jacket that Jack was now pulling off one of the shelves in the supply room. He had left Arcee idling in the main bay while he ran down to the first underground level of the base to grab the warmer clothing, and now he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the jacket before hurrying back out into the hallway. He turned to shut the door behind him, and that’s when he heard it: A strange sound, like the noise of static between two radio stations. It sounded like someone had the volume on the radio turned up to a decent level, but then it would slowly decrease until it ended with another noise, a sound like a pop and a click made together at the same time. * _Thock_ *.

Jack paused and glanced down the hallway to where the holding cell was located. Was it Knock Out snoring in his sleeper mode? Jack had never heard any of the Autobots snore, he didn’t think they were capable. Was it simply the inhale and exhalation of Knock Out’s vents? No, there was no rhythm to it, it was completely irregular. Sometimes the static noise was long and drawn out, other times short and clipped, but always there was the * _thock_ * sound at the end. Several times Jack was left to wonder if the noise had stopped altogether when a few seconds of silence passed, but then it would suddenly start up again.

What if it was Knock Out trying to escape? Jack slowly tip-toed down the hallway, passing by the stack of tires he and Agent Fowler had hidden behind earlier, as he imagined that the sounds coming from the cell could be anything: Knock Out trying to pick the lock; Knock Out somehow able to transform his hand into his buzz saw and quietly attempting to sever the cell bars one at a time while the rest of them slept; Knock Out trying to short-circuit the overhead lighting panel installed in his cell to create some sort of electrified weapon (everyone knew he had a fondness for those).

Jack slowed his pace as he reached the cell, his back pressed against the wall, heart pounding in his chest as all those possibilities raced through his mind. If Knock Out _was_ trying to escape, Jack needed a plan before he even dared to peek around the edge. Knowing he had his cell phone on him, Jack decided that if he looked into the cell and saw something he didn’t like, he would immediately run back to the main bay and call Agent Fowler mid-stride. And then he would wake up _everybody_.

Jack knew that if he was slow and patient, he could be quiet enough that Knock Out wouldn’t notice him sneaking a glance. When you were barely one meter tall surrounded by beings often as tall as a human house, it was easy to go unnoticed. Jack waited until the static started up again, using the noise to cover the sound of his movement as he carefully leaned out from the wall and looked around the corner into one end of the cell.

Knock Out was sitting on the floor, his back to the recharge slab as he faced the bars. He had one leg drawn up, his elbow resting on his knee as he leaned his head into his hand to support it. His sharp digits were covering his optics, but Jack had a clear view of his mouth, his denta plates bared and clenched tight. The static noise suddenly came to a halt as Knock Out’s mouth opened and the sound * _thock_ * released from his throat. His frame gave a slight tremble before he took an inward vent, and the static started up again.

Jack slowly stepped further out into the hallway to center himself on the cell, both brows raised high at whatever he was seeing take place here. Now that he had a closer view, he could see that lines of optic cleanser were running down the sides of Knock Out’s face into a gathering point under his chin before a drop fell into an already sizable puddle on concrete floor below.

Dude, was he _crying_!? Jack stood dumbfounded for several seconds before he almost laughed, though that moment of hilarity at finding a Decepticon _crying_ was short-lived as the more mature side of Jack won over. While he still believed Knock Out was a complete asshole that deserved everything he got, Jack could not help but feel a tiny bit guilty at having stumbled across this pathetically sad scene. He quickly decided that removing himself from this situation as silently as he had come across it was his best option, and he slowly began to tiptoe away. Then suddenly his phone chimed that he had received a text message. Jack instantly froze where he stood, his eyes going wide. The alert was a sound recording he had made of Arcee transforming, and though the sound was comparatively quiet to the static emanating from Knock Out’s throat, it still shattered the setting with its foreign presence.

Knock Out whipped his head up and dropped his hand immediately at the noise, his teary gaze looking upward, way beyond where Jack’s height reached, as he expected to find another Transformer there. When he saw only the blank wall opposite his cell, his optics immediately caught movement near the floor and he just _knew_ it was one of those damn kids. He didn’t care which one it was, or which of the Autobots the pet belonged to, it had just found him in a _very_ compromising situation, and he was absolutely _livid_.

Knock Out launched himself at the bars from where he sat, reaching through the space between them to slam his fist down onto the floor right beside Jack so hard that it made the human stumble and fall backwards onto his ass.

Jack quickly back-peddled on his hands and heels, eyes wide at the pair of very angry red optics that glowed out at him from behind the bars. His mother had told him what her nightmares were like (he had honestly had a few himself), and he imagined they looked just like this.

Knock Out stayed low to the floor so that he was as eye-level with Jack as he could manage. For a moment, all he could see was his HUD telling him: TARGET ACQUIRED. It took several seconds for him to find the sensibility to speak, and when he did, his voice was uncharacteristically low from the past hour he had spent throttling his vocalizer, lest anyone hear his actual cries. It was something he was very well-practiced in, but it did do a number on his voice box for several klicks afterwards.

“Get away from here, human,” Knock Out growled long and low, his forehelm pressed up against the bars as he slowly pulled his arm back in, and he stared Jack down like a caged animal. “You get the _fuck_ away from here _right now,_ before I do something I regret.”

Jack was so startled by Knock Out’s demeanor and voice that for a moment, he could not find his own. He watched Knock Out seethe at him from within the cell and a sudden image of Megatron appeared in his mind. That rage, that voice, those words, that was something Megatron would say and do. Jack sat, almost paralyzed by the fear that was quickly taking hold of him, but then the red optics glaring at him faltered, and he watched as fresh tears seeped from their corners. Knock Out winced, pulling back from the bars and clutching at his head with his hand once more as another tremble caused his armor plates to rattle quietly. _That_ was not something Jack could ever imagine Megatron doing. Megatron would never cry.

“So, you _can_ be remorseful,” Jack finally spoke, though he stayed where he was, seated on the floor and as far away from the cell as he could get.

Knock Out said nothing in response. Instead, he pushed himself to his peds and moved to sit down on the recharge slab, his back to Jack.

“Look,” Jack said as he now slowly stood as well, “if it makes you feel any better, my mom’s made me cry like, a _million_ times.” He wasn’t even sure why he offered that up, but he could not think of anything else to say.

Knock Out scoffed at Jack’s words, keeping his back to Jack as he replied, “Why would you think your mother has _anything_ to do with this?”

“Because I heard her _screaming_ at you earlier tonight. When I couldn’t find her with everyone else, I went looking for her, and when I heard her voice, I hid down the hallway, and I heard everything she said to you,” Jack crossed his arms, watching Knock Out’s frame rise and fall as the bot vented.

“Tell June I apologize,” Knock Out said as he clasped his hand over his optics again. “Tell her I apologize for what I did to her.”

“I think she’d probably rather hear that from you,” said Jack as he dared to take a few steps closer to the cell.

“ _Fine!_ _Don’t_ tell her, then!” Knock Out turned on the recharge slab just enough for his red optics to glare back at Jack over his armorless shoulder. “Forget I said anything and _fuck off!”_ He made sure to continually curse in the human’s language, to make sure he was getting his point across.

“Whatever you say, Knock Out,” Jack held the ex-‘Con’s gaze briefly before he turned and walked back down the hallway. Of all the Decepticons, he had honestly feared Knock Out the least. Perhaps it was because of the Medic’s smaller stature, or his tendency to run from conflict rather than choosing to stay and fight. Either way, now that Knock Out was among them, Jack decided that maybe he ought to reconsider dismissing Knock Out as a non-threat. Clearly the bot was unstable.

Just as he was about to round the corner, Jack heard the crackling static sound start up again at the opposite end of the hallway. He paused, and briefly considered going back, or alerting one of the Autobots, but then he thought of his mother’s words, and of all the things the Decepticons had done to her, and to Jack himself, and to their planet, and he narrowed his eyes as he continued down the corridor once more.

 

Jack realized ten minutes to into their ride that he should have grabbed a pair of gloves along with the jacket, but freezing fingers were not enough to make him ask Arcee to turn back. Zipping down the Nevada highways at one-hundred-miles-per-hour under a clear, starlit sky was nearly enough to make Jack forget the cold, yet at the same time he had not been able to shake the image of the weeping Decepticon from his mind. Jack knew he should not let that ruin his outing with Arcee, but he found that the whole scene had left him oddly unsettled as the two traveled down the empty highways.

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Arcee’s voice issued forth from the speaker set inside Jack’s helmet, as though she could pick up on his uneasiness.

“Sorry, I’m just...taking it all in, I guess. I really missed doing this.”

“Me too.”

Jack said nothing for a moment, and he silently watched another mile marker fly past as Arcee drove him towards an unknown destination. He did not usually attempt to do any of the steering, Arcee always seemed to instinctively know where to go.

“My mom made Knock Out cry,” Jack finally said after another five minutes of silence, and he blinked as Arcee suddenly slowed her roll underneath him at his words.

“Whoa. Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Jack said as he straightened up in the saddle seat a bit and eyed the handlebars, as though Arcee could somehow tell he was blinking to her that way.

“Your mom _broke_ a ‘Con?” Arcee’s voice chimed into the helmet’s headset once more as she picked up speed again. “Slag. How did she do _that?”_

“Earlier when everyone was here, she snuck off to his cell and screamed at him for like five minutes. Bill and I went looking for her and heard it from down the hall, so of course we got closer to listen in.”

“Of course.”

“She told him what a horrible piece of shit he was for kidnapping her and Bill, but then she just went _off._ Like, she straight up blamed him for everything any Decepticon did to Earth and to humans, _ever._ Then she told him he was beyond redemption and that the Autobots would give up on him and let him die in his cell alone,” Jack said and then shrugged, his hands still gripping Arcee’s handlebars tightly. “I think it was good for her.”

“Yikes. That’s harsh,” said Arcee, and she slowed to take a left-hand turn onto a smaller side road, one that would eventually wind its way up the face of the rocky cliffs that rose up on the western side of the highway.

“What, you think he doesn’t deserve it?” Jack asked, raising a brow behind the visor of his helmet.

“Oh, he deserves _some of_ it, sure. But blaming him for everything the Decepticons _ever_ did to Earth? That’s a bit much. I mean, he’s not _Megatron._ I’m sure it wasn’t _his_ idea to wipe out Jasper, for instance.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Now it was Arcee’s turn to be silent for a time as he she continued down the road. She found herself legitimately torn between wanting to tell Jack the truth, the _whole_ truth, and yet at the same time not wanting to disclose a single thing to the human. But even after all this time, a small part of her wanted to defend Knock Out, regardless of the side he had chosen and the wrongs he had committed, if only for the fact that she liked to think that he would still have done the same for her. “You know, Knock Out and Breakdown lived on Earth for centuries without incident before they joined up with the Nemesis permanently,” she offered.

“They did?” said Jack as he eyed the new stretch of road before them. “And you guys never went after them?”

“Nah, they never really gave us any reason to.”

“But they were _‘Cons._ Why not at least capture them, or force them off the planet?”

“They weren’t _always_ ‘Cons, and Optimus always said they didn’t pose enough of a threat to try and get rid of them.”

“Wait, they weren’t always ‘Cons?” Jack asked as he glanced down to the handlebars. “What were they, then?”

“Neutrals.”

“Huh,” Jack leaned back in the seat as Arcee followed the winding road around. “I wonder what made them change their minds?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. They made their choice, they paid the price,” Arcee replied, though she had often wondered the same herself. She steered herself around the road, and pulled off to the side once they reached the top of the cliff. She waited until Jack dismounted before she transformed and casually gave her arms a stretch as she stepped to the edge of the highway to glance down at the town below. “Things look good from up here! Look at all the construction! Cybertronians could use a few pointers from you humans, you’re all so resourceful when it comes to rebuilding,” she said as she smiled back down to Jack, who had moved to stand by her side.

“Oh please,” Jack’s words were muffled as he pulled the helmet from his head, then pointed with a finger. “You see the scaffolding around that building down there? That’s been there since April. We _are_ rebuilding it’s just...I guess it just _seems_ slow.”

“I know the feeling, trust me,” Arcee muttered as she looked back down to the glowing lights of the town. “We’ve been working on a hab complex back on Cybertron for months now and it’s still missing an entire wall.”

Jack smiled to her griping, eyeing the view spread out before them for a time before he glanced back up to her. “You have to go back soon, huh?”

“Yeah, I do,” Arcee sighed, for despite her desire to go back to Cybertron, she’d found she was almost just as happy to be back on Earth. “I can stay for one more cycle, maybe two. We’re in the process of rebuilding, just like you guys. I need to be there for that,” she said as she glanced back down to Jack, “to help out.”

“I get it, no worries,” said Jack as he smiled. “Just don’t forget about us. You’ll still come back to visit once in a while, right?”

“Of course I will, partner, I promise.”


	29. A Helping Hand - Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The conversation that takes place in this chapter got really long, so I felt it necessary to break it up into two parts. My apologies for the abrupt cut-off at the end here.

Arcee quietly cursed to herself as she limped towards the medbay the next morning. On her way back to the base after dropping Jack off last night, she had run over something in the road. Whatever it was, she had felt it kick up under her rear wheel spokes and rattle against the underside of her fender. She had nearly spun out on the highway, it had startled her so much, but she had been quick to recover and shake it free from her fairings, or so she thought. She made it all the way back to the base without a hitch, but that last transformation out of her alt mode as she entered Hangar E had caused a twinge of pain in her lower right leg that she knew was not good. Not wanting to wake Ratchet or First Aid however, she’d gone straight to her quarters to power down, and told herself the pain would be gone by morning, which unfortunately had not been the case when she awoke the next cycle.

Now as Arcee hobbled towards the medbay, she could already hear Ratchet’s voice in her head, griping that whatever she had done, she must have been going too fast. That was always the first thing Ratchet asked if anyone showed up with an injury that wasn’t immediately visible to the bare optic: “How fast were you going?” and whatever the answer was, his reply would be, “Well that’s _too_ fast!” Of course, if you mocked him, or said you were only going five miles per hour, he would throw a wrench at you, and then you’d _really_ be injured, though it was rumored he threw them slow on purpose, to give bots a chance to duck.

Arcee could not help but smile at her thoughts of the old Medic as she crossed the threshold of the medbay, and she paused to glance around the wide, open room in search of him. It was oddly quiet, throughout the entire base actually, as she realized she had not encountered a single being, Cybertronian or human, on her way from her quarters to the medbay. There was no sign of Ratchet or First Aid, but her optics did come to rest on Knock Out, who was perched on a stool at one of the side counters, his chin in his hand as he stared down at a data pad set on the countertop before him.

“Hey?” Arcee said questioningly as she lifted a brow to the fact that Knock Out was in here, alone and apparently unsupervised, and she took another quick glance around before she limped another few steps further into the bay.

Knock Out had been staring at the same page of “Mechular Biology 402” on the data pad for the past forty-five klicks. He was supposed to be “studying”, but his mind had wandered so far from the medical text that he had not even heard Arcee approach, so he looked genuinely surprised when he spotted her in the room. He had not wanted to leave his cell that morning, for anything, and had refused Bumblebee’s order to do so yet again, but when Ratchet had come stomping down the hallway and given him the now all-too-familiar “Ratchet scowl”, he knew he had to relent. He knew this was Bumblebee’s doing, part of the Autobot Commander’s plan to prevent him from “hiding” in his cell, but it was only cycle two back on Earth and Knock Out was already starting to hate it.

“’Hey’ yourself,” Knock Out said, eyeing Arcee just as warily as she was watching him.

“Is Ratchet here?” Arcee asked, still glancing around and suddenly becoming a bit paranoid. She did not want to assume the worst, but that was pretty much her default stance on everything after four million years of war.

“No,” said Knock Out as he straightened up on the stool a bit, fully aware of her paranoia as her EM field seeped closer to his, “he and Agent Fowler went shopping.”

“Shopping? Where? What for?” 

“Uh, that one store. The big one, with all the things,” Knock Out tried to remember the name of place, as he gestured to her with his hand, “Wall-something.”

“Wal-Mart?” Arcee blinked.

“That’s it. They were having a sale on antifreeze and Ratchet wanted to accumulate as much as possible before we go back to Cybertron. He said they were going to purchase the entire stock,” Knock Out said and shrugged. “Somehow it’s cheaper than buying it in bulk. I’ve never really understood how the humans distribute their commodities.”

“Antifreeze? But we don’t use that stuff.”

“It can act as a substitute for hydro-ethylene fluid,” Knock Out said, then narrowed his optics a bit at Arcee’s blank stare. “It raises the boiling point of your engine coolant to keep you from overheating?” he offered as an explanation, as though all bots ought to know the inner workings of their own systems on such a level.

Arcee glared back to Knock Out and the look he was giving her. She had half a mind to go off on him then, for trying to show her up with all of his fancy medical jargon, but she suddenly remembered how Jack had found him last night, and she quickly changed her mind. She glanced away from Knock Out instead, eyeing the room once more. “Weird. What about First Aid?”

“He Bridged with Bumblebee and the Vehicons to scout a location for Energon mines,” Knock Out replied as he eyed the data pad for one more second before shutting if off.

“And they just left you here? Alone?” Arcee blinked back to him.

“Well...yes?” Knock Out shrugged again. “I mean, it's not like I can really _go_ anywhere.”

“Who’s manning the Bridge?”

“They left one of the Vehicons, Control-Alt-Delete or whatever his designation is.”

“I thought you were supposed to be in the cell?” said Arcee, her paranoia heightening again. She crossed her arms over her chest, though the shift in her weight caused her to wince as the sharp pain in her leg returned.

“This room might as well be one,” Knock Out said, though he noted Arcee’s grimace of pain and quickly moved his analytical gaze over her form. He had seen her limping and favoring one leg, but he had been silently waiting to see how long she would let herself suffer before she deigned to ask him for help, if she would at all. “Everything is locked and I can't leave. If I cross that threshold, my I/D Chip will trigger.”

“Really?” Arcee blinked to the door, then back. “It can work like that?”

“Apparently. Arcee,” Knock Out finally rolled his optics at her, “you're _clearly_ in pain. Will you just let me look?” She was no less stubborn than she had been five million years ago, he noted.

Arcee eyed Knock Out, then muttered a quick “Fine,” as she reluctantly conceded and shuffled across the rest of the room to sit on the end of the closest medslab.

“What happened?” Knock Out asked as he moved from the stool and set a ped on one of the rungs, releasing a trigger which caused the stool’s legs to shorten significantly before he picked it up and carried it over to the medslab to set it down onto the floor a few feet from where Arcee sat.

“I was on highway ninety-three after I dropped Jack off at home last night,” Arcee began, and she noticed how quickly Knock Out blinked up to her at that as he sat down on the stool before her. She could sense a tiny little flicker of embarrassment in his signature before it disappeared completely and he glanced down and away. “There was something in the road that I must have kicked up when I went over it,” she continued, raising her right leg a bit so he could see it under the light and she could eye it herself as well. “I think it’s stuck in there. I powered on this morning and now it hurts to walk.”

Knock Out sat silently as a flash of panic raced through his processor. Had they taken that drive before or after Jack had shown up at his cell? Would Jack tell Arcee what he’d seen? The human was _her_ pet, after all. And who else would he tell, if he hadn’t told them already? Knock Out quickly gathered his panic and embarrassment and shoved it aside in his neocortex for later processing, giving Arcee’s leg a momentary blink before he looked up to her from the stool. “I have to open up your plating to really see what’s going on in there.”

Arcee held his gaze for a moment, not knowing why she had expected that he could examine her _without_ touching her, but then she sighed and crossed her arms, narrowing her optics slightly. She was not afraid of him, not that she thought he would try anything, because she could kick his aft, she had always been able to kick his aft, and he knew that as much as she did. “ _Fine,_ just… _be careful.”_

“Oh, Arcee,” Knock Out said with a smirk, suddenly amused by the whole situation as he set the ped of her right leg onto his left thigh and began to pop open her armor plating at the seams, “I remember when you used to _trust_ me.”

“That was a long, LONG time ago,” Arcee said, still eyeing him warily.

“I remember when we were _friends_.”

Arcee vented a heavy sigh once more. She was again torn between wanting to speak to Knock Out at length about their shared past and what, if anything, that meant for them _now,_ or simply letting sleeping cyberhounds lie. She was not sure if he was teasing her, or if he was looking to have that conversation as well. Best to test him, then. “And if you _never_ mention that again, I promise I won't either,” she said, and she scowled down to Knock Out’s bent helm as he peered into the inner workings of her leg.

“Oh?” Knock Out blinked back up to Arcee for a moment, quickly dulling the brightness behind his optics, which he had previously heighted to illuminate the inside of her armor plating. “Would it tarnish your reputation among the ‘Bots so much if they found out, or is it still the _other_ reason you wish to keep hidden?”

“Both!” Arcee said with a huff.

“Tsk, rude,” Knock Out muttered as he looked back down to her leg and reached further inside.

“Okay fine, the _other_ reason, mainly,” said Arcee as she glanced toward the medbay door. Apparently Knock Out _was_ willing to talk, but Arcee would have preferred that this conversation happened in a more private setting.

“Why?”

“Because it’s _embarrassing_!” Arcee glared down to Knock Out again, tensing her frame a bit as she felt his fingers creeping along her protoflesh. “Are you saying you're _not_ embarrassed!?”

Knock Out scoffed to the question. “Well I’m not embarrassed about that _first_ million years with the free housing and free high-grade and free basically anything we ever _wanted_ ,” he said as he paused in assessing Arcee’s injury to glare up at her and end his rant on a sarcastic note.  “Oh, how _horrible_ life was! How _embarrassing_ to be living quite literally in the lap of luxury!”

“It _wasn’t_ free!” Arcee glared right back. “We paid for it in _other_ ways, you _know_ that!”

“Hey, _I_ always had a good time, and so did _you,_ as I recall,” Knock Out muttered as he glanced back down, his fingers continuing to inch up along Arcee’s leg until they grasped onto something foreign. “There’s something stuck in your drive chain.”

“Can you get it out?

“With no tools and only one hand?” Knock Out looked up to Arcee again, “ _Maybe_.”

Arcee nervously eyed the entrance again before she looked back to Knock Out. “Well, try, if you can. And if you’re not embarrassed, then why are you still hiding your collar? How do you do that, by the way?”

“Custom armor plating,” Knock Out said as he raised his chin and turned his head to the side so she could get a better look, “made of vanadium and tellurium, the strongest light-weight alloy across ten galaxies. It costs more than both of us at the same time, if you remember how much that was,” he said with a smirk.

Arcee rolled her eyes at Knock Out’s last words, then leaned forward to squint at the nearly-imperceptible scales of armor around Knock Out’s neck. “You’re lucky that didn’t get ripped off in the blast that took your servo,” she said as she refocused her gaze on his optics.

“Yes, I realize that,” Knock Out shrugged again. “How do you hide yours?”

“Magnetized nanites,” Arcee replied as she put her hand to her own neck and spread her fingers across her throat, the action momentarily displacing the thousands of tiny nanites from her own collar that was of the same colored metal alloy as Knock Out’s.

Knock Out watched this display and made a face, shuddering as the nanites all crawled back into place once Arcee removed her hand. “You let those little _bugs_ live on your frame all the time? Gross.”

“You didn’t answer my question. If you’re not embarrassed, why are you hiding it?”

“…You and I _both know_ that no bot would have ever taken me seriously if I didn’t,” Knock Out said reluctantly. “I started hiding it right before classes started at the IMA, right after we parted ways and you left for Deltron Zero.”

“See?” Arcee gestured to him with a hand. “So, you _are_ embarrassed.”

Knock Out went still for a moment, his hand still partially inside Arcee’s leg. “ _Fine._ I’m embarrassed. But _some_ _bots_ knew, and they didn’t care. _Megatron_ knew. Soundwave knew. Starscream of _course_ knew, and _he_ never cared, although I suspect he would have treated me the same regardless of what my previous caste was. And then of course Shockw—” Knock Out stopped himself, but he knew he’d already gone too far, judging by the look on Arcee’s faceplates, and he was immediately apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay…,” Arcee started and then paused as well, now aware that Knock Out was giving her his undivided attention. She was thankful for that, but she knew she should use it to her advantage while she still could. She surprised herself then, at the first question that immediately popped up from her servers, as though it was the most important thing on her mind. “Did Shockwave ever mention…I mean, did he ever…speak of me?” she asked. She had taught herself millions of years ago to bury her memories of Senator Shockwave and do her best to forget they had ever existed, but the truth was that she still thought about him, and far more often than she liked to admit. It didn’t help when she’d occasionally run into him on the battlefield either, though the cycloptic, gun-laden Decepticon was _not_ the mech she thought of when her memory banks dredged up the old files of the 1.4 million years she had served as then-Senator Shockwave’s Companion.

Knock Out blinked in surprise to that. Here Arcee had been so adamant about keeping silent regarding their past, but now she suddenly wanted to talk, and about Shockwave no less? Regardless of her flip-flopping, Knock Out felt instantly sympathetic towards her, amazed that she apparently still cared what her Senator thought of her. He did not want to answer her question with the truth though, and that was painfully obvious as he vented a sigh, stalling the response he did not want to give. “Arcee…”

“Did you ever ask him about me?”

“Arcee, are you _sure_ you want to know the answer to that?” Knock Out said with an almost pleading look up to her.

“What did he say?” Arcee leaned forward as she searched Knock Out’s optics with her own and tried to ignore the little flicker of hope rising in her spark. “You have to tell me. _Please?”_

Knock Out stared up at Arcee from his seat on the stool, his hand long-since removed from her open leg plating, his task there forgotten, and he tried to hold her gaze as he replied, but he quickly hung his head instead, because he did not want to see the look on her faceplates when he answered. “He never mentioned you. I asked him once if he remembered you…and he said that he did, but that your past interactions and his relationship with you were… _improper_ and _illogical_ and…” Knock Out paused to dare to glance up at her, and the look of complete and utter hurt Arcee was giving him pained his spark. “You know what they did to him,” he said, trying to reason with her emotional reaction, though he knew that was pointless. “ _Everyone_ knows. He wasn’t the same bot.”

Arcee suddenly realized how hard she was biting the inside of her lower lip with her denta and how ridiculously desperate she must have looked and sounded just then. Of _course_ Shockwave would have said those things, and _of course_ she knew that he wasn’t the same bot that she had known before, as Shockwave had been the victim of “Shadowplay”, a horrific and invasive procedure involving the removal of the emotion centers and processors of a bot’s brain node. And as if that had not been enough, the Functionists then altered his frame completely, removing his hands and faceplates and replacing them with claws and an expressionless visage in a ritual known as “Empurata.” And although all of that had happened years after the Senators had “cleansed” themselves of Companions, it had still pained Arcee to know that the mech she had cared for and pleasured and truly _adored_ for the first 1.4 million years of her life essentially ceased to exist. He’d been the first in what would become a long line of lost partners for her.

As though he could read every single thought and emotion that was coursing through Arcee’s processor as he watched her, Knock Out quickly tried a different tactic to get his point across, and he narrowed his optics up to her as he spoke. Maybe her memory banks had glossed over the fact that the Senators abandoned them. “You _do_ remember that we nearly _died_ for them and then to thank us they kicked us to the streets and cut all contact, _right?”_

“Of _course_ I do!” Arcee snapped out of her moment of self-pity and glared back to Knock Out. “But don’t you fragging sit there and tell me you haven’t thought about Dai Atlas in all these vorns! Don’t tell me you haven’t _also_ wondered if he ever thought about _you!”_

Knock Out blinked to Arcee’s sudden outburst but then shamefully hung his head once more. He too had often questioned what became of his Senator, Dai Atlas, the mech that had been _his_ entire world for the first million years of his own life. The last Knock Out had heard, Dai Atlas had left Cybertron during the war, claiming no allegiance to either faction, and had set up shop on the distant planet of Theophany. Then there were rumors about Crystal City and him joining up with a bizarre group of scholars and scientists calling themselves the “Circle of Light”. But despite the occasional, knowingly-fruitless interpersonal comms Knock Out sent to the former Senator every five thousand years or so, admittedly when Knock Out was eight or nine or ten cubes deep into the high grade, Dai Atlas never responded, even though the channel between the two mechs had always remained open. Knock Out admitted none of that to Arcee now, but he did not lie to her, he _couldn’t_ lie to her. “Yes, I have.”

“Then quit judging me,” Arcee grumbled as she crossed her arms. “I’m amazed that the ‘Cons never let your past identity slip to us, especially not from Starscream.”

Knock Out raised his head to glare up to Arcee at that, as he still felt the need to defend his former Second in Command. “Maybe you Autobots should have given him more credit, then.”

“Psh, yeah right,” Arcee scoffed, watching Knock Out as glanced back to her leg.

Despite the pulse of annoyance Knock Out was sensing from Arcee’s EM field, Knock Out decided to gamble with her unpredicted willingness to talk, and confess to her that which he had held back during their previous encounter on the Nemesis. “Ratchet knows,” he said as he flicked his gaze back up to her to try and gauge her response. “He knows what I was, and he probably knows it about you, too.”


	30. A Helping Hand - Part II

_“What?”_ Arcee stared at Knock Out with wide pink and blue optics. “How? You _told_ him!?”

 _“No!”_ Knock Out quickly raised his hand and leaned away from her. _“Hell_ no! He figured it out on his own because he has access to my medical records, just like he has access to yours!”

“What do you mean!?”

“Do you remember how every mega-cycle, they would give us that series of vaccines?”

Arcee paused for a moment to recall the last time she had received any sort of inoculation, then glared to Knock Out once more. “Yes? _So?_ Ratchet still gives those to me, just like he gives annual inoculations to every bot!”

“Apparently they don't _give_ that series to just _any bot,”_ Knock Out said, hoping she would make the connection on her own.

“So _what?”_

“So, every time you get them, it goes in your medical record in the CMRD,” Knock Out said, rolling his optics once more when it was clear that Arcee again had no idea what he was talking about. “The Cybertronian Medical Records Database! Those records outline _every_ detail of _every_ medical procedure you’ve ever had done in any registered medical facility. Dates stamps, time stamps. Every inoculation, every repair, every surgery, every medication.”

Arcee narrowed her optics as she uncrossed her arms and set both hands on either side of her so that she could loom down over Knock Out to make it clear just how angry she was becoming. “You told me that medication you got us came from an _unlisted_ clinic in the Dead End.”

“It _did,”_ Knock Out scowled back to her, not feeling threatened by her tense frame in the slightest, _“_ but I am _talking_ about everything they did to us at the Iacon Medical Facility _before_ that. It’s all there in our records.”

“So!? There's nothing that would indicate what we _were.”_

“Yes, there is. The treatments we received for the poison, for the sodium silicate that _just so happened_ to start on _that_ _particular day_ in history? Those are _Ratchet’s_ words, not mine. _That’s_ how he figured it out.”

“That doesn't mean anything! The entire incident was covered up!”

“Sure, covered up so that the public and the media never found out,” Knock Out shrugged, “but no one scrubbed our _medical records_ of all those treatments.”

Arcee finally reached out to grab Knock Out by the top edge of his chest plate and tug him close as she hissed through her denta. “What are you saying, Knock Out?”

Knock Out let her mech-handle him for about three nano-klicks before he leaned back and shoved her away at the same time, though her grip had not been strong to begin with, and he knew this to be a clear sign she was not honestly intending to harm him. “I'm _saying_ Ratchet isn't stupid, not even a little bit. He put two and two together. If he can do it with my records, he’s probably done it with yours, too. Primus, they’re probably practically identical up until the cycle we left the medical facility.”

Arcee had released Knock Out just as quickly as she grabbed him, all but ignoring his shove at her as his words finally struck home and she gripped her helm with both hands, her optics wide with realization. “Oh my God...”

“Tsk, relax,” Knock Out waved his hand at Arcee before he set her right ped back onto his thigh, as it had slipped off with them pushing each other back and forth, “he won't tell anyone. He's bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“How long d'you think he's known?” Arcee asked, her hands now clasped in front of her as her paranoia-filled signature flared outwards.

Knock Out paused in reaching his hand back inside Arcee’s leg to raise a brow up to her. “How long have you been aligned with the Autobots?”

“3.2 million years.”

“Probably that long, then,” Knock Out nodded.

“Frag,” Arcee winced as she buried her faceplates into her hands.

“He won't care,” Knock Out shook his head and peered back into her leg plating.

“Well the others might!”

With that Knock Out paused, Arcee’s words drawing to mind his recent “conversation” with Pharma and what the Medic had been most adamant about: That the Autobots would not be as accepting of him as the Decepticons had. Knock Out slowly shifted his gaze back up to Arcee, now quite serious in his tone. “Do you really think that?”

Arcee could see her own fear being reflected back at her from the look Knock Out was giving her. She wished she could give him an answer that would make them _both_ feel better about it, but she honestly did not know. “I’m not sure. Maybe?” she shrugged a slender shoulder down to him, then glanced away as she raised a hand to skim her fingers across her neck. “I’m lucky I’ve made it _this_ long without the damn nanites screwing up,” she paused then, eyeing Knock Out’s bent helm once more. “Do you still have the brand?”

Knock Out nodded to her as continued to work. “Yes. I tried to remove it several times, but it’s bound to my serial number somehow. No matter what I tried, laser scalpels, acid, grinding and sanding, even a protograft from my thigh, it always came back. It can’t be removed, just like any other bot’s serial number.”

“I tried to get rid of mine, too,” Arcee admitted, and she reached a hand to her right side to pop open one of the smaller pieces of blue armor along her torso to reveal the serial number and Cybertronian lettering above it that had been stamp-welded into her protoflesh. “I tried everything, it still came back. It’s gone for about a cycle and then it’s like it just… _grows_ back.”

“Look, if you think Ratchet hasn’t figured it out from your records alone, if he’s ever had to replate you, he’s probably seen the brand and recognized it. He’s certainly old enough to know what it means.”

Arcee mulled that over for a moment as she closed the armor panel on her side. Finally conceding to the fact that Ratchet almost certainly knew, she frowned as she glanced to the medbay door again. She _did_ believe that Ratchet would never tell a spark, that he _hadn’t_ ever told a spark, but the others worried her. Despite the friendships she had built with them all, they might still judge her for it. Still, most them were younger than her, hell, she was closer to Ratchet’s age than she was to Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Wheeljack and even Knock Out. She slowly glanced back down to Knock Out again, whose fingers she could feel carefully tugging at the chain links that ran along the length of the inside of her lower leg. “Maybe no one knows what the collars and the brands mean anymore,” she mused. “Our caste basically ceased to exist once the war started. It's not like anyone had the credits for…that kind of thing.”

“True,” Knock Out shrugged, “but anyone who was sparked _before_ the war would know the marks of a Pleasurebot when they saw one and there’s plenty of –”

“Shhhh!” In one quick motion, Arcee grabbed Knock Out by the shoulder, spun him around on the stool so that he was facing away from her, and wrapped her left arm around his face so that his mouth was muffled against her inner elbow-joint as she put him in a choke-hold. “Shut _up_! What did I _tell_ you about using words like that!?” she hissed into his right audial before quickly looking to the door with wide optics, then went right back to scowling down at Knock Out again. “Do you _want_ me to rip your head off!?”

Knock Out barely had time to blink before he found himself at Arcee’s mercy, and while he did not think she would really twist his head from his neck (though he believed that she was fully capable), it was still an uncomfortable position to be in. He had not realized how serious she had been about not saying those words aloud, as though they somehow did not exist if no one ever spoke them. He did not understand how she could sit there and have the conversation they were having and then refuse to acknowledge their caste by name, but he was not going to fight her on it. He narrowed his gaze just a bit before slowly shaking his head in the negative to her question.

“Then _don't_ say them out loud!” Arcee gave a final warning before she released Knock Out and crossed her arms over her chest plates as she glared elsewhere. She did not like to have to resort to threats of physical violence, but Knock Out was far too casual about it all, and unlike him, _she_ still had a reputation to uphold.

Knock Out slowly shifted himself around on the stool to face Arcee once more, and he was still glaring at her as he decided to let another little piece of information go. Maybe the more Arcee realized how many bots were aware, the less afraid she would be to eventually disclose herself to them, though Knock Out knew he was trying to convince her to do so only for his own, selfish reasons. He silently hoped that if they were accepting of what she was, there was a greater chance they would be more accepting of him as well. “Optimus knew.”

Arcee blinked back to Knock Out for a moment, raising a brow in question before she suddenly glared. “Are you telling me that you and him—”

 _“No!”_ Knock Out yelled, looking seriously affronted before he rolled his optics and slapped his hand over them. “By the _AllSpark,_ Arcee, NO! I had _a conversation_ with him once! Back in Rodion! Back when he was still Orion Pax!”

“What _kind_ of conversation?” Arcee said, her gaze still narrowed.

“It was right after we’d moved there,” Knock Out let his hand drop back into his lap and returned Arcee’s glare. “I’d been scrounging for Energon all cycle and I guess I drove around too much because I started having one of those coughing fits, you remember how awful and loud they could get.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Arcee unconsciously winced and wrapped an arm around her torso at the memory of the painful and long recovery from ingesting the poisoned drinks that had, it would later be discovered, been intended for the Senators. The powdery sodium silicate crystals had clogged their ventilation systems, left them unable to maintain any sort of decent speed in alt mode for more than five klicks, and caused them to overheat constantly for stellar-cycles. They had barely made the trip from Iacon to Rodion, once they had reluctantly decided to leave the city when it became apparent that “their kind” was not particularly welcome there.

Knock Out shook his head and shrugged. “He must have heard me hacking up an air filter from down the street, because he came walking over. He identified himself as a police officer. I thought for sure he was going to arrest me for a noise violation or something, but he gave me a card with the location of that unlisted clinic instead.”

Arcee had quit glaring, and now she gave Knock Out a questioning look. “How come you never told me any of this before?”

“It was inconsequential at the time,” Knock said with a shrug. “Orion Pax was an Archivist-turned-cop. You and I were…what we _were_. None of it _meant_ anything back then. I didn’t tell him my designation, and he didn’t tell me his, but I think he still remembered,” Knock Out pulled his gaze from Arcee’s and went back to work on her leg. “He always gave me this _look_ like he remembered,” and it was hard to tell whether he considered that a good thing or a bad thing when he said it.

Shifting her gaze down to her peds, Arcee contemplated that new piece of information. She took a certain comfort in knowing that if Optimus had indeed remembered Knock Out from all those millennia ago and still asked him switch sides time and time again, it was possible that he would not have cared about her matching situation as well, though, on the other hand, this was Optimus Prime they were talking about, the mech that judged no bot and gave everyone a chance. “No wonder he always tried so hard to get you to convert,” Arcee said once she refocused on Knock Out at that realization.

“Hmm,” was all Knock Out said to that, before his hand went still inside her plating. “I think I’ve got it.” Arcee felt a brief, uncomfortable tug at her drive chain as Knock Out yanked something free from its links, then he held the culprit piece of debris up for her to see: A long piece of barbed wire. “Blame the humans, _I_ always do.”

Arcee took the wire from Knock Out’s fingers with her own, blinking at it for a moment before she realized that the excuse to converse with Knock Out was now over, and she hadn’t even asked the _real_ question that had been bothering her for deca-cycles. She quickly looked past the wire in her hand to Knock Out as he carefully shifted and closed her leg plating back into place. “Knock Out, I...I don’t know what to do now that this war is over. What the frag am I supposed to do?”

Knock Out paused in closing Arcee’s armor plating to blink back up to her, clearly not understanding her question. “What do you mean?”

“I put all my efforts into switching to Warrior caste,” Arcee said, focusing her optics on the piece of barbed wire again as she rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. “I never thought I’d live to see us win. What good is a Warrior with no war to fight in?”

Again, Knock Out blinked to her, both confused and honored that she would ask for his opinion, on _anything._ “You’re asking me?” he said, and then paused to consider her question. “I don’t know…I guess I’m wondering the same thing about myself.”

“Sure, but you’re a _Medic,”_ said Arcee as she set the wire onto the medslab beside her. “At least you still have something to fall back on.”

“Not according to the Autobots, I’m not,” Knock Out instantly scowled to that as he straightened up in his seat a bit. “Apparently you all require _actual_ degrees.”

 _“What?_ You never completed it?”

Quickly looking away from Arcee at that, Knock Out shook his head once as he closed the final plate of her leg armor.

“Why not? Primus, you made it that far and then you just _quit?”_ Arcee gaped down to him, as shocked at this confession as she had been with all the rest that Knock Out had made in the past thirty klicks of their conversation, because she remembered, very well in fact, the cycle that the two of them had resolved to leave their old caste behind, to start over and really _make_ something of themselves. She had helped Knock Out study for his entrance exams to get into the Iacon Medical Academy. She had celebrated with him when he obtained a near perfect score. She had lamented with him when he was at first denied entry due to his caste, and then celebrated with him again when the academy officials changed their minds, even knowing full well _why_ they had changed their minds, and she had not cared _one bit_ , because if it took servicing the Dean of Admissions to get in, then so be it. They had been determined to change their lives, no matter the cost. She had not faulted Knock Out for doing what he did to move himself up in the world, hell, she’d had to do the same. So to hear that after all of that he _hadn’t_ completed the schooling, it brought about some sort of almost maternal instinct in her that made her want to scold him.

“I was busy with other slag!” Knock Out said, though he looked away as he admitted it.

“Like _what!?”_ Arcee growled.

 _“Other_ things! The _war_ was coming! They were shutting everything down!” Knock Out said as he turned his faceplates back up to Arcee as though looking for forgiveness.

Arcee narrowed her gaze, tilting her head to the side slightly in a clear indication that she did not believe Knock Out was giving her the whole truth.

Knock Out recognized that look instantly, and it still made him feel guilty, even after nearly five million years. He tried to hold her glare with his own, but eventually glanced away. “I was too _busy_ and…it was too hard,” he shook his head again, this time at himself. “They’d already condensed the entire program into three-hundred mega-cycles instead of two-thousand! It was too much to learn that fast! It just got too fragging _hard_ at the end. I was failing everything,” he let that sit for a moment, trying to reign in the shame that was emanating from his EM field, though he was certain Arcee could feel it. “So,” he finally continued as he vented a sigh and a shrug, “I don’t know what to do, either. First Aid thinks I can just skim these old study guides and _magically_ pass everything,” he gestured to the data pad on the counter behind them.

Arcee knew Knock Out was still not being entirely truthful, she knew him well enough that she could pick up on his hesitations. There was something else there that he wasn’t admitting, but she decided not to push him on it, for now. “If you _told_ First Aid that, I’m _sure_ he would help you,” she offered.  “He _was_ a teacher y’know.”

“Oh, yes, _certainly!_ ” Knock Out finally looked back to her to glare again. “I should just _admit_ to him that I’m even _dumber_ than he thought I was to begin with!”

“He would _never_ think that! I’ve never heard him say a single negative thing about you! Primus, not even after you _captured_ him! He’s defended your designation since the cycle he met you! He doesn’t think you’re dumb!”

Knock Out held Arcee’s glare for a moment, though she was giving him another familiar look, like she was challenging him to try and contest her word. In the end Knock Out hung his head once more, clearly admitting defeat. “Well I can’t do it, so…I guess I’m _not_ a Medic, and there’s no more war, so I suppose you _aren’t_ a Warrior,” he paused as he frowned at the floor then, not wanting to accept such a self-imposed fate, but then a second option suddenly crossed his processors as he looked back up to Arcee. “What if we left?”

“ _Left?”_ Arcee said as she blinked to him and then frowned. “What do you mean?”

“What if you and I just...got out of here?” Knock Out raised both brows, glanced quickly to the medbay exit, then back. “We could Bridge back to Cybertron and find a ship and, I don’t know,” his optics flicked back and forth for a moment as he thought before he looked back to Arcee, “start over somewhere else? Somewhere _far_ away, with other bots, bots who don’t know who or what we are now _or_ before. We can change our alt modes. We can change the way we look, _that_ I can do. We just need to find some new plating and I can –”

“Knock Out,” Arcee quickly interrupted him, almost laughing at the suggestion, though her smile quickly faded when she saw how serious he was about it, “I can’t just _leave_. And walk away from Cybertron after we finally got it back? Walk away from my home and my friends? And _you_ can’t just leave either, you know that,” her optics narrowed. “I’m surprised you’re even suggesting it, to be honest. I thought you said you wanted to join us?”

Knocked Out searched Arcee’s optics for a moment before lowering his helm. “Right, of course,” he shook his head and silently hoped that she wouldn’t bring up his request to escape to any ‘Bot. He quickly turned the topic of discussion back onto her. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find some other form of work. Maybe you should speak with Ironhide, he seems…reliable enough. Ratchet said he used to head some sort of civil militia before the war. Maybe he’ll be looking to start that up again? Either way,” Knock Out shrugged, “we have the right to perform at any function desire now, right? We can be whatever we want. Wasn’t that what we were fighting for to begin with?”

“Yeah,” Arcee said, now wringing her hands together, but she could tell that Knock Out doubted those words even as he said them, “yeah, whatever we want.” She vented a sigh, lifting both brows to Knock Out as he looked back up to her. “I will ask Ironhide, that’s a good idea, but what about you? You’re really going to just give up?”

“Listen,” Knock Out cringed as he raised his hand to rub at his forehelm, “nothing I do or think or _want_ matters anymore, anyway. I still have that ‘tribunal’ to face, for my ‘war crimes’,” he rolled his optics to that, as though the idea was still ridiculous to him. “I don’t even want to think about what sort of sentence I’ll be facing for that,” Knock Out gave a small shudder. He knew it was coming, Ratchet kept mentioning it, and First Aid’s words “You _can_ be good, can’t you?” had honestly been haunting him for stellar-cycles, but as always, he pushed all that into the back of his mind and tried to forget about it. “Maybe when that’s all over, whatever it’ll be, I suppose that if worse comes to worst I’ll just... _find_ someone, you know what I mean,” Knock Out flicked his gaze to Arcee, briefly, then glanced between his peds once more. “I’ll find someone nice who’s halfway decent, and maybe if I’m lucky they’ll give a slag about my well-being too, and then I can just live with them and service them, and hopefully it all works out.”

Arcee had been listening intently, her own mind contemplating the truth to Knock Out’s words and the possibility of having to resort to their old means of survival. The war had come and they’d been forced to reinvent themselves, and now the war was over and they were being forced to reinvent themselves again. In the end, however, she scoffed, because history had proven that their primary method of making a living was just too unforgiving to try and take up again. “Psh, yeah, I tried that. _Twice._ The Decepticons killed them _both.”_

“Well, you’ve got me beat there,” Knock Out grumbled as he reached up to take the piece of barbed wire from the medslab where Arcee had placed it, so that he could inspect it closer. “They only took _one_ from me.”

Blinking to that, Arcee canted her head to the side to give Knock Out a questioning look, but when he refused to hold her gaze for more than a nano-klick, she could not help but smirk. “Ahh, so it’s _true_ then? You and Breakdown?”

Keeping his optics focused on the wire between his fingers, Knock Out merely nodded.

“Oh c’mon,” Arcee said, “that’s no secret and you know it. Everyone always assumed.”

“Yes, well, _hooray_ for them and their correct assumptions, then.”

“I’m sorry you lost him. I know what that feels like, _really_ I do.”

“You mean that _spark-crushing_ feeling that your existence is _meaningles_ s without someone to _care_ for and to buff and wax and service and make them feel _good_ about themselves?” Knock Out said with a sardonic smile before he tore his gaze from the wire and stared helplessly at the floor. “It’s really not _fair_ is it, that they would program us to be so… _dependent_ on others to make _us_ feel happy,” he said as flicked his gaze up to Arcee briefly, then quickly looked down again. “Other bots aren't programmed like that…It’s really not fair.”

Arcee frowned at Knock Out’s lowered helm. She was seated well inside the sphere of his signature, and she could quite clearly feel a growing fear and sadness emanating from him. Almost instinctually, she found herself reaching out to place a hand against his faceplates, but she winced when she felt his frame go rigid under her touch, and she wondered if she had just made a huge mistake.

Knock Out had not been expecting Arcee to touch him like _that,_ but when she did it was as though time suddenly stood still. He had forgotten how warm her hands felt when placed against protoflesh as opposed to armor, and he found himself recalling all the times long ago that he had asked her to teach him that trick, but he’d never been able to replicate it. For one nano-klick, he contemplated shifting away from her, his default response to being randomly touched without his consent having been set to “panic” by Pharma, but this wasn’t the Seeker Medic’s hand and signature offering sympathy and understanding. This was from someone who _knew_ him, the old and perhaps more genuine him, and on a far greater level than any other bot left in existence. The familiar connection was so enticing that Knock Out found himself shuttering his optics and very slowly leaning into that touch like an Earthen canine might lean into its master’s scratch under the ears.

For that brief moment, memories of 1.4 million years of fighting on opposite sides of the war were forgotten and replaced with recalls of a friendship forged at first only on the basis of caste alone, but which very quickly had turned into something more, a bond that had been cultivated over a million years’ worth of attending Congressional galas, of charming Senators and the Elite Class at after parties, of late-night gatherings and backroom impromptu data trading. But also, in the end, of being confronted with their own mortality, of being abandoned, and then of too many nights suffering through the lingering effects of the poison and the tears and the realization that the mechs they had blindly assumed loved them for those million years would not be welcoming them back into their quarters, ever again.

Arcee had given the briefest of smiles at the way Knock Out nuzzled against her hand, but the despair she could sense from him tugged at her own spark, and she used both her hands now to cup his face as she lowered her helm to rest it against his, and tried her best to meet his anxiety-laden signature with her own calming aura and quiet, soothing voice. “Knocky, it will be alright.”

Knock Out let the piece of barbed wire fall to the floor at his peds as he reached up to grab hold of Arcee’s left hand against his faceplates, because he was afraid she would let go before he’d had long enough to bask in the caress and signature of someone who, for however brief of an instant, understood exactly where he was coming from. He wanted that moment to last forever, Arcee’s touch so familiar and reassuring that he was actually able to forget for a moment all of the things that were hanging over his head since the war hand ended. For four nano-klicks, he was able to lose himself to her completely, but he could not help the eventual crash back into reality and the tremble that ran through his frame as he clung to her. She was being too nice. After four million years of war and avoiding each other, she was being _far_ too nice, and he had a very good idea as to why. Yet he still did not want to let go of her, and he vented a heavy sigh, mumbling his words against her arm as he spoke. “Your stupid pet told you, didn’t he,” it was a statement and not a question.

“He’s not stupid,” Arcee said, and she smiled slightly at Knock Out’s words as she shifted to cradle his head in her arms. “And yes, he might have mentioned…something. It’s okay, you know. It’s not the end of the universe that he saw you,” she turned her head so that her cheek rested against Knock Out’s helm, and she trailed her fingers along the grooves between the fins of his head plates and then down the strips of red biolights that ran along the back of his neck, and she felt him melt under her touch, the same way he always had.

His optics still shuttered, Knock Out winced at her reply as he tried to take his mind back to where it had been only a moment ago, away from the here and now and back more than four million years, on one of the thousands of nights in Rodion when he was feeling particularly alone and hopeless about their situation. And he would quietly slink into Arcee’s quarters to slip onto her recharge slab beside her and fold his frame against hers in a search for some basic level of physical comfort, and she never pushed him away, not even once, because she’d been seeking that comfort as well, but was often too ashamed to ask for it, even from him. The time and place were different back then, but today, his words were still the same, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Yes, you can,” Arcee said, in much the same fashion that she had so many years ago, though the different times called for different words. “You made some mistakes along the way, but that can be fixed. It can all be fixed, you’ll see.”

Knock Out was not sure how long he sat clinging to Arcee’s frame like some sort of lifeline, he lost track of time, but the peacefulness he found there came to an end when the screeching sounds of the hangar’s bay doors opening shattered the moment like glass. It was followed by the rumble of a familiar engine, the noise drifting in through the medbay entryway.

Arcee immediately lifted her frame to sit up straighter on the medslab as she quickly pulled her hands back to her sides and blinked expectantly to the door, and Knock Out too straightened up in his seat and followed her gaze as he reigned in his signature and erased all traces of having been comforted by Arcee’s touch.

The mechanical sounds of a transformation could be heard before heavy footfalls preceded Ratchet’s presence in the doorway, his blue optics instantly narrowing at the pair as he moved to one of the counters to set down the collection of human-sized boxes he was carrying in his hands.

“Anyway!” Knock Out said as he quickly picked the barbed wire up off the floor and looked back to Arcee. “Put some air in that tire and you'll be good as new.”

Ratchet vented a sigh as he started towards the medslab where Arcee sat. “What happened?”

“It’s fine,” Arcee smiled to the old Medic as she raised a hand, then slid off the medslab to stand back on her peds, as though to prove her point. “Knock Out fixed it for me.”

Ratchet eyed the two suspiciously before he shrugged and stepped back to the counters again. “Fine. Knock Out, you’ll need to give me a dictation of the treatment later so I can add it to the CMRD.”

“Of course,” Knock Out replied, surprised that Ratchet was not interrogating him further regarding Arcee’s injury, though he did not mention it as he set the barbed wire back onto the now-empty medslab.

“Thank you for your help, Knock Out,” Arcee gave him a genuine smile and small little nod of acknowledgement that her gratitude was for more than just removing the foreign object from her armor plating. She smiled to Ratchet then as well, and quickly disappeared through the doorway before she could pick up on the momentary flare of joy that spread from Knock Out’s spark at her words.


	31. An Apology

By the seventh cycle back on Earth, the accompanying Vehicon squadron made up of Click Bait, Steve, and Task Manager had managed to locate by memory one of the many abandoned Energon mines on the planet. The Autobots then designated the mining operations at the Yukon Territory, Canada location their number-one priority. Daily routines were quickly established with Bumblebee, First Aid, and the three Vehicons Bridging to the mine every morning while Ratchet and Knock Out remained behind to operate the Groundbridge and sort through the remaining supplies. Evenings were reserved for sifting through whatever Energon crystals the mining group managed to bring back with them on any given day, refueling, and downtime.

True to his word, Bumblebee made sure that the only time Knock Out stayed in his cell was to recharge. Otherwise, every morning one of the ‘Bots would escort Knock Out to the medbay and “lock” him into the room by activating the I/D Chip sensor at the open door, where he would then sit and review the medical texts First Aid had given him, under Ratchet’s watchful and occasionally narrowed optic, until the need to sort Energon crystals or supplies took more precedence.

Unfortunately, Arcee’s obligations on Cybertron had forced her to leave Earth within two cycles of her arrival, and her apologetic good-bye and promise to return whenever her work schedule would feasibly allow did nothing to ease Knock Out’s growing sense of loneliness that none of the other bots could alleviate.

Every time Energon rations were consumed, Knock Out was forced to sit at the table with the rest of the Autobots, a practice which he hated even more than being locked into the medbay with Ratchet. Those first few evenings had been so painfully awkward and uncomfortably silent that Knock Out found himself praying to Primus that the Groundbridge would stop working and leave the others stranded in Canada just so he would not have to endure another refueling session with them. But after a few days of him sitting silently at the end of the table with his EM field pulled in so tight that First Aid had later commented on it, Knock Out found, to his relief, that he was largely ignored.

The Vehicons _never_ stopped talking, which to Knock Out was both confusing and fascinating at the same time. It was as though they had been withholding their true selves and personalities back for the nearly five-thousand years he had known any of them. Most of the time when they were all gathered around the table, Knock Out kept his head down, glancing up only if he was, Primus-forbid, addressed directly, but his audials were always dialed in to the Vehicons’ conversations. They were all obsessed with Earth culture, amazed by the human/Autobot alliance, and found Agent Fowler, Jack, and Rafael’s presence highly entertaining whenever one of the humans visited the base. It did not take Knock Out long to become silently jealous of their abilities to fit in so easily, and of the friendship he noted between the three Vehicons that must have certainly existed even during the war; Knock Out had simply never cared enough about them to notice it.

As lonely as he felt, Knock Out took no comfort in being forced to socialize with the others, it was not a loneliness that could be resolved simply by being in another bot’s presence. And as if the forced socialization was not bad enough, Knock Out came to realize one morning that the growing pain in his lower back was not from the new recharge slab, but from the weight of his single servo that was slowly causing his frame to stoop downwards and to the right. He had been wandering around for a deca-cycle hunched over like a mech older than Ratchet and hardly noticed. So it was that as the second week of their stay rolled around, Knock Out finally mustered up the courage to ask Ratchet to do something about it, though he was not very good at asking for help.

As was now customary, First Aid walked Knock Out into the medbay that morning before tossing a wave and heading off to the Groundbridge to meet the others. Knock Out eyed Ratchet’s back, the older mech turned away from him at one of the counters, as he tried to get a reading on his current mood before speaking. “When are we going to replace my servo?” he asked as he gestured to his left side with his right hand. “My entire frame is off-balance and my spinal cables are _killing_ me. It’s been stellar-cycles!”

Ratchet did nothing to hide the sigh he vented outwards at Knock Out’s question, or rather, his complaint. He had been trying to be more patient with the ex-‘Con since encountering him in the storage room back on the Nemesis, which he still felt slightly guilty about, and when June and Jack had come to him several cycles ago to confess what one had said and the other had seen, Ratchet made even _more_ of an effort not to bother Knock Out, by essentially ignoring him most of the day, for judging by Knock Out’s sarcastic remarks and perpetual scowl if one _did_ attempt to converse with him, Ratchet could only assume the mech _wanted_ to be left alone.

Now pausing in his work at the counter, Ratchet turned on his stool to look over to Knock Out as the other mech was claiming his own seat on the opposite end of the medbay where the data pad with “Mechular Biology 402” was waiting for him. “ _We_ will not be replacing anything,” said Ratchet, “ _I_ will replace it once I’ve built you a new one. You want to correct your posture? I’ll remove your other wheel and the rest of your armor plating, that will balance you out.”

“I don’t _want_ them removed! Primus, you won’t even be able to tell what I _am_ anymore! I’ll look like some kind of freak!” Knock Out replied as he became instantly paranoid that Ratchet might attempt to force him to remove the rest of his plating, which would put his serial number and caste branding on full display. Best to steer Ratchet away from that line of thought completely, then. “Why do you _insist_ on building everything from scratch? That will take _ages_. Let me look through your parts inventory,” Knock Out continued, though he very quickly held up his hand in defense at the sudden glare Ratchet gave him. “Not _that_ inventory, the _regular_ one. I’ll whip something up myself.”

“Absolutely not,” Ratchet said as he turned back to his work.

“Come _on!_ ”

“No.”

“ _Fine!_ ” Knock Out said as tossed his hand into the air and let it drop onto the counter. “I won’t even _build_ anything. Comm someone back on Cybertron and have them send over a Vehicon servo. Look, I’m _that_ desperate, okay?”

Ratchet slowly turned in his seat to raise a chevron brow to Knock Out. How did the mech _still_ not understand this? “I tell you I won’t allow you to build your own, but you think I would allow you to snap on a servo that once belonged to a Vehicon instead? _No_. The answer is ‘No’. _”_

“Why _not!?”_

“Because that servo belonged to another _bot,_ Knock Out!” Ratchet sighed, palming his head in one hand at the fact they were having this conversation again. “Do you know what we did with all of those Vehicon parts you removed from the medbay supply rooms? We _buried_ them, as all body parts from deactivated bots _should_ be. Have you _zero_ respect for the dead?”

“Of _course_ I do! It’s just—”

“And what do you think Caps Lock and Steve and Task Manager and all the others would say if they saw you walking around with the servo that once belonged to their fallen comrade?” Ratchet asked, trying, _again,_ to get Knock Out to see things from any other perspective but his own, to which Knock Out gave him a blank stare.

“…I don’t know? It’s just a _servo!_ It’s not like I’d be running around wearing their best friend’s _head_ or something! _Megatron_ wore Liege Maximo’s servo once and _that_ was no big deal.”

“Yes, that _was_ a big deal,” Ratchet was very quick to respond as he pointed a finger to Knock Out, “and Megatron was _wrong_ to do that, and my answer is still ‘No’. I’ve already downloaded your frame specs from the CMRD and created the blueprint. I _am_ working on it, you just have to be patient.”

“It will go faster if you let me help you. I _know_ anatomy! I _know_ how to assemble frames!”

Ratchet waved Knock Out off with a hand and looked back to the collection of slides he was sorting. “Pass those four final classes and the Cybertron Medical Licensing Examination and _then_ we’ll talk about you _assisting_ me in my work.”

Knock Out blinked to that as he felt his spark drop into the pit of his fuel tanks. “You want me to sit for the CMLE?”

Ratchet glanced up from his work once more, blinking to the look of shock Knock Out was giving him. “Of course! You want to me a Medic, don’t you? You have to pass the exam then, just like every other bot.”

Knock Out looked away from Ratchet’s gaze, his spark now nervously racing in its chamber at the thought of having to successfully pass the grueling, six-cycle long examination required to earn the Medic title. He had forgotten it even existed. Despite his apprehension at completing the original final four classes, he had been holding onto the notion that maybe, just _maybe_ he might actually be able to squeak by with passing grades, but the CMLE? That would be impossible at this rate, and he swore he could hear a sound very similar to that of his cell bars locking into place, as though it were the sound of his fate being determined for him.

It was not, however, the sound of holding cell bars being locked into place that could be heard from the medbay, but the slam of the human-sized door to the hangar’s main bay as it closed. There was a momentary pause, then a voice called out loud enough to echo through the massive, open structure: “Autobots, I’m ho-ooome!”

“Oh _no,”_ Ratchet blinked with wide optics to the doorway at the sound of the voice before he quickly turned back to his work and wrapped his arms around it protectively. “Primus dammit, I thought she was stuck in Japan!”

His current dilemma now completely forgotten, Knock Out stared at the doorway as well before blinking to Ratchet. He had never before felt the level of paranoia he was now picking up from the other bot’s signature, and it immediately heightened his own fear as he expected the worst. “What is it!?”

Ratchet grumbled as he opened the cabinet above the counter he was stationed at and quickly shoved several of the slides onto the shelving as though he feared for their safety. “It’s Miko!”

“ _Who? What?”_

_“Miko_. Bulkhead’s human charge,” said Ratchet as he shut the cabinets and then glared to the doorway once more. “She’s loud and annoying and…and _loud!”_

As if on cue, a tiny figure appeared in the doorway, the human female quickly spotting Ratchet and running up to him to wrap her little arms around not even half of his wide, metal leg as she looked up at his face. “Hi, Ratchet! I’m _back!”_

Ratchet briefly glowered down to the human clinging to his leg before he looked back to the countertop and the few slides he had left there. “Let joy be unconfined.”

“Did you _miss_ me?” Miko asked with a smile before she reached up to his tire treads and began to literally climb up his frame as though it were a jungle gym on a playground.

“ _No,”_ Ratchet hissed, though he remained still as Miko scrambled up his form and leaped across his shoulders and down his left servo to eventually hop down into the countertop.

“Aww, of _course_ you did!” Miko said as she clasped her hands together and gave Ratchet a winning smile.  “You know I’m your favorite!”

“Don’t _touch_ anything while you’re in here,” Ratchet grumbled, still clinging protectively to his slides as he watched Miko warily.

“I heard First Aid came with you guys, where is he? I brought some _sick_ _beats_ for him to listen to,” said Miko as she pulled her phone from her back pocket and held it up for Ratchet to see, then she gave a quick glance around the medbay, only to blink when her eyes landed on Knock Out. “Whoa!” she pointed to the ex-‘Con. “ _You’re_ not First Aid!”

“First Aid will be back later. I’m sure you remember Knock Out,” Ratchet said as he watched Miko run along the countertop straight for Knock Out, as though she held no fear of him whatsoever. “Don’t bother him!”

“Knock Out! Of _course!”_ Completely ignoring Ratchet, Miko stopped roughly one-hundred yards from Knock Out to set her hands on her hips as she peered up at the red mech. “Doc Knock! Knock Out that I knocked out! Hah! Remember _that!?”_ she pointed to him. “Wow, so you weren’t kidding when you said you were joining? And the Autobots _let_ you!? That’s _crazy!”_ she gasped, then blinked as Knock Out leaned a bit closer to assess her through narrowed optics. “What happened to your face!?” she pointed to the sloppy weld that ran from the left corner of his mouth and down his chin. “Did _I_ do that? I don’t remember drawing blood, I mean Energon. What happened to your arm!?” Miko gasped again, as though she just now realized the mech was missing a body part. “Did Predaking rip it off? Did _Megatron_ rip it off because he got mad that you joined the Autobots? What happened to all the _other_ Decepticons, anyway? How come no one else switched sides like you did? What about Starscream, what happened to him? Did you know I fought him once? I did, for real! And I kicked his ass! I was in the Apex Armor and I punched him _right_ in the face! KA-POW!” Miko made a fist and jumped into the air as though to prove her point. “Just like that! Just like I did to you!” she quickly pointed back to Knock Out. “Starscream didn’t get knocked out, though. He must be a lot tougher than you are.”

Knock Out had been watching the black-and-pink-haired human with mild interest. She was unlike the other humans he had encountered at the base thus far. She seemed entirely fearless, as though the fact that there were two six-meter tall mechs in her presence and one of them her former enemy made _zero_ difference to her. Still, she did seem somewhat familiar, and then, at her words, he suddenly _did_ remember being laid out by her when she was in the Apex Armor. Knock Out quickly narrowed his gaze at that, though the rest of Miko’s sentence was so convoluted and sporadic that he felt it necessary to comment on her behavior first. ”I think you’re suffering from some sort of attention deficit disorder, human,” he said as he eyed her. “You should delete the temporary recall files from your RAM and run your defragmentation program on safe mode. Sometimes that helps.”

“Hah!” Miko laughed, slapping both her hands against her thighs as though she took Knock Out’s suggestion for a joke. _“Totally!_ Hey, remember that one time when –” and she launched into yet another stream-of-consciousness verbal tirade which Knock Out quickly set to “mute”.

_“Bulkhead’s,_ huh?” Knock Out said as he looked back to Ratchet, blatantly ignoring whatever Miko was yelling at him now.

“Mmm,” was all Ratchet would say as he turned back to his slides.

“That makes sense,” Knock Out glanced back to the data pad on the countertop before him and tapped at the screen with a finger. “He probably lets it push him around and does whatever it tells him to.”

“‘She’, not ‘it’,” Ratchet corrected as he too ignored Miko, who was still talking a mile a minute, “and yes, she’s definitely the one behind the wheel in that relationship.”

“…and where _is_ Bulk anyway?” Miko finally paused as she turned her head back towards Ratchet. “I thought he’d be here?”

“He’s busy assisting with the reconstruction of Cybertron,” Ratchet said as he glared. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“I’m going to college!” Miko yelled as she lifted her arms above her head as though she had won a prize.

“Eh?” Ratchet blinked to her. _“Here?”_

“Yeah! I got into Nevada State! It’s right up the highway! I start in the spring! I flew over for a few weeks to check it out first.”

“Oh,” Ratchet’s shoulders slumped a bit at the “good news”, though he quickly added some words of praise, as he did not want to discourage her from continuing her education, but it was hard for him to sound genuinely excited, and his words came out in more of a mutter. “Good for you. And what will you be studying?”

Miko shrugged as she eyed her phone for a moment. “Undeclared major, for now. Doesn’t really matter at this point, anyway. Soooo,” she tucked her phone away once more as she looked back to Knock Out, “if you’re an Autobot now, how come you aren’t wearing their badge?”

_“*Ahem!*_ Miko,” Ratchet spoke before Knock Out could get a word in, “does Agent Fowler know you’re here?”

“Oh, no!” Miko whipped her head back to the old Medic, completely forgetting she had asked Knock Out a question as she ran back to Ratchet and clambered back down his frame despite the glare he was giving her for doing such. “I should go say hi to him!”

“Yes, you probably should,” Ratchet muttered as he looked back to his slides and made a face at the feeling of tiny human shoes running across his back armor. Primus, he did _not_ miss that.

Miko leaped from Ratchet’s leg to the floor and went racing towards the doorway at full speed, as though the now nineteen-year-old still had the energy of a preschooler. “Okay! Bye!” she yelled as she tossed a wave behind her and did not look back.

“Good _Lord,”_ Knock Out glared after the human female. _“Now_ I remember her. Never stops moving, never shuts up. She’ll _love_ the Vehicons,” he said, and he would have never thought he’d be equating such personality traits to them. He glanced back to the data pad once more, bringing the screen back to life with a touch of his pointed finger as he casually muttered, ”I’m amazed you haven’t attempted to deactivate her yet.”

That caught Ratchet’s attention immediately, and he turned his narrow-eyed gaze back to Knock Out. _“Autobots_ don’t deactivate humans.”

“Ohh, well _excuse me!”_ Knock Out quickly raised his hand as he glared right back. “I guess they never gave you enough _reason_ to. I guess none of them ever _stole_ the frame of one of _yours_ and _wore_ it like the Apex Armor!”

“Yes, _speaking_ of that,” Ratchet gave Knock Out his full attention now, “the Vehicons told me what you did to Silas.”

Knock Out held Ratchet’s gaze from across the room for several nano-clicks, completely silent before he calmly looked back down to his data pad and scrolled his finger across the screen. “So what.”

Ratchet narrowed his optics once more. “They said you tortured him for a stellar-cycle.”

“So what.”

“They said his screams were so loud you could hear them through the walls of the Nemesis, and I know how thick that metal is.”

“It deserved it,” Knock Out said as he shrugged, his optics still on the screen below him.

“Listen,” Ratchet leaned his right elbow on the counter as he set one of the slides back down onto the pile he’d been protecting from Miko, “I know that what Silas did was wrong, capturing Breakdown and cutting him open like that, and then using his frame after he was deactivated, but you _do_ realize that what you did to Silas in return was _just as bad_ , if not _worse,_ don’t you?” Ratchet had not forgotten the cycle that Bulkhead and Smokescreen returned to the base with the news that the navy blue up-armored vehicle that had been spotted outside Rafael’s home was not, in fact, Breakdown, but Silas operating Breakdown’s frame, although he had then referred to himself as CYLAS, CYbernetic Life Augmented by Symbiosis.

“Oh- _ho_ , yeah,” Knock Out chuckled to himself, “what I did _was_ way worse, you got _that_ right.”

“You think it’s _funny?”_ Ratchet asked, “It’s incidents like _that_ that are going to come up at your trial, you know. Torturing humans doesn’t really make you an _ideal_ Autobot candidate.”

“Oh well,” Knock Out shrugged as he finally looked back up and over to Ratchet, and the look he gave the old Medic was so dark it made Ratchet realized that despite Knock Out’s claims of Autobot allegiance, there was definitely still _a lot_ of Decepticon in there. “I did it. I don’t regret it. It deserved it,” Knock Out repeated.

“ _He_ deserved it for what _he_ did to Breakdown?” Ratchet corrected Knock Out as he glared right back, though suddenly he spotted an opening, a new way in which he might get the ex-‘Con to see the whole thing differently. “You’re saying that because of what Silas did to Breakdown, he deserved to be tortured, is that it? For using Breakdown’s frame?”

“Precisely,” Knock Out nodded, glad that Ratchet finally understood.

“Well,” Ratchet shrugged, now quite casual in his demeanor, “but that frame wasn’t _really_ Breakdown’s anymore, was it? He’d been deactivated. It was _just_ a frame, nothing more,” he shrugged again. “Just his parts, _that’s_ all that was left. Just parts. Oh, but Silas _needed_ those parts _,_ so why _shouldn’t_ he have used them?” Ratchet gestured to Knock Out with a hand, “ _Breakdown_ didn’t need them anymore, and there’s nothing _wrong_ with using a _dead mech’s parts,_ right?”

Knock Out’s optics went wide as he stared back, and Ratchet swore he could see the exact moment when everything suddenly, _finally_ clicked in the ex-‘Con’s brain node, the realization of his prolonged cognitive dissonance written all over his faceplates.

_“Right?”_ Ratchet asked again, so sharply that Knock Out gave a slight start in his seat, as though the word brought him back into reality.

Knock Out slowly turned his stare down to the concrete floor, his optics shifting one direction and then another as his mind was trying to rationalize everything but coming up with nothing. That did not stop him from denying what Ratchet was saying, though, even if he had no real excuse. “It’s not the same thing…”

“It is _absolutely_ the same thing,” said Ratchet, who then narrowed his optics as he watched Knock Out suddenly stand and head straight for the doorway. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to my cell,” Knock Out muttered, clearly agitated as he paused by the door frame. “Turn the I/D Chip sensor off. _Now.”_

Ignoring the tone in Knock Out’s vocalization, Ratchet shook his head. “Oh no, you don’t get to walk away from this. You’re not going anywhere because we’re not done having this conversation,” he tapped a metal finger against the countertop. “Silas was going to deactivate Breakdown for his parts. _You actually did_ deactivate bots for their parts. You tell me what’s worse.”

“It’s not the same _thing!”_ Knock Out gestured to Ratchet with his hand, his angry signature now filling the medbay. “Those bots were _already injured!_ Breakdown _wasn’t!_ I already told you, I needed the parts to _save lives!_ Silas only wanted them for _himself!”_

“And Silas was wrong for _that_ reason, too. So, if Silas was wrong to want the parts for himself, and he was wrong for then using Breakdown’s parts _after_ he was deactivated, then you are _definitely_ in the wrong to have _deactivated bots for their parts to begin with,_ whether you did it to save others or not,” Ratchet said as he held Knock Out’s glare. “The fact that Silas was unable follow through with his original plan to deactivate Breakdown for his parts is—” he started again, but Knock Out quickly cut him off.

“The only reason he _didn’t_ follow through was because—”

“Because the Autobots found Breakdown and saved him before Silas could finish the job!” Ratchet snapped back, not letting Knock Out complete his sentence either. “ _We_ saved him, his sworn enemies saved him. He was _your_ assistant, where the hell were _you?”_

Knock Out literally growled to the old Medic before he stalked back over to his stool and slumped back down onto it, turning his back to him as he gripped his forehelm in his hand and tried to will away the many emotions that were threatening to surface. He vented slowly as he tried to sort out his mind, but Ratchet’s persistence was making that damn near impossible.

Ratchet turned on his own stool as Knock Out move away from the door, and he paused in his words as he watched the ex-‘Con grip his head as though he were in pain, the same gesture that Ratchet had seen from him before, on that very first day stellar-cycles ago in the medbay of the Nemesis, when they had very briefly discussed Starscream’s extensive medical history on the CMRD. Ratchet did not enjoy forcing bots to talk about things that made them uncomfortable. Hell, hadn’t he just been forced into one such discussion with Knock Out himself not a deca-cycle ago? But Ratchet felt this conversation was necessary, because he was certain that at the rate all of this was going, there really was no hope for the ex-’Con, much as June had confessed to stating to him earlier.

Ratchet waited a few nano-klicks before speaking once more. “You need to do some _serious_ spark-searching and figure out where you really stand in all of this, or where you want to _see_ yourself standing in all of this eventually,” he said, “because right now _no one_ is going to look at your history coupled with your current attitude and see a mech that’s ready to become an Autobot. _I_ certainly don’t. An Autobot would _never_ leave a fallen comrade to—”

“I didn’t _leave_ him!” Knock Out actually gasped as he turned back to Ratchet, looking seriously affronted at the accusation.

“Then where _were_ you? Bulkhead told us Starscream and a couple of the Vehicons were the _only ones_ to show up,” Ratchet said, careful not to raise his voice too much, despite his exasperation, and when Knock Out quickly shook his head and turned back to the counter to bury faceplates in his hand again, Ratchet sighed. He could already picture how the tribunal would go, yet despite everything that had occurred up until now, he did not want to see Knock Out crash and burn when all was said and done. “No one will ever understand your side of the story if you don’t _explain_ it. You have to _talk_ to us.”

Knock Out vented a sigh of his own, silent for a moment before finally speaking, though he kept his face hidden behind his hand as he did so. “…Megatron ordered us not to go after him…I decided I was going anyway. Megatron was waiting for me in my shuttle when I went to take off. He knew I would try. We fought,” Knock Out said, and then shrugged as he set his hand back on the counter, and he glared at the now dark data pad there. “He completely wrecked me. I’m not a Warriorbot, you _know_ that.”

“Okay,” Ratchet said with a tone and a look that suggested he was thankful for the explanation. “I _apologize_ for making the assumption that you left Breakdown, then. But surely you realize by now how _easily_ assumptions like that _can_ be made about you given your track record and _severe_ lack of remorse for all that entails,” Ratchet looked to the counter briefly as he selected a different slide from the small stack, then turned back to Knock Out. “Listen to me: You want to be an Autobot? Then it’s time to start coming to terms with the fact that the way you process some things is _very_ wrong on _many_ levels _._ That behavior needs to be corrected and you need to start working on it _now,_ not later. Not after your tribunal. _Now._ Do you understand?”

Exhaling another deep vent, Knock Out nodded, keeping his gaze on the data pad. He was a bit surprised that Ratchet believed what he’d said just then, despite the fact that it was the absolute truth. Hell, the mech hadn’t even asked him any follow up questions, or demanded he prove it to him, which Knock Out could have done by naming the exact dates and times of the many, many repairs it had taken to fix the damage Megatron had dealt him that cycle, all of which could be viewed in the CMRD. Knock Out could have also drawn Ratchet’s attention to Megatron’s medical history around that time as well, and pointed out the repairs Knock Out himself had made to the warlord’s frame, once Knock Out was back online and able to function. He could have pointed out how he’d had to weld Megatron’s fusion cannon back onto his right servo after Knock Out had sawed it clean off his arm, or how he’d had to repair the deep puncture wound that ran through Megatron’s chest plates and into his protoflesh that, had Knock Out’s drill been a mere inch to the right, would have gone straight into Megatron’s spark chamber. But Ratchet did not ask for proof, and thus Knock Out did not offer any.

As the day progressed, Ratchet was able to carefully tease one more conversation out of the ex-‘Con, that being what had happened to Silas _after_ Knock Out had tortured him. Ratchet had not expected his question to turn into a tale of Dark Energon and Terrorcons running rampant on the Nemesis, nor had he expected to hear that Airachnid had been the cause of the human’s ultimate demise. It was equally surprising to learn from Knock Out that Soundwave had Bridged the spidery fem and her Insecticon army off of the ship, only to spit her out onto one of Cybertron’s moons, so desperate were the Deceptions to get rid of her. But as he listened to Knock Out speak and watched and felt the way his demeanor and EM field changed with all that he was explaining, Ratchet quite easily picked up on the emotions that he was aware Knock Out was trying to hide any time he spoke of Breakdown. It was not so much Knock Out’s choice of words in telling the story as it was the tone and manner in which he said them. The look on Knock Out’s faceplates suggested that what Megatron had forced him to do with Breakdown’s then toxic and hazardous frame clearly haunted him far more than torturing the human or being repeatedly beaten or deactivating bots for their parts. It was not something Ratchet would have ever expected to witness coming from a Decepticon, yet in that same moment, it suddenly explained more to him about Knock Out than the entire past four stellar-cycles of interactions with him combined.

They were interrupted only once, when Miko bounced back into the medbay to announce her departure, but also to exclaim (though Ratchet heard it as “warn”) that she would be back in December and that then they could all hang out again, _all the time,_ and wasn’t that just _great!?_ Though it was not long after that interruption that Ratchet received a hail from the comm station to open the Groundbridge, which he was now able to do remotely by data pad, thanks to Rafael’s recent upgrades to the system.

Click Bait was the first bot to poke his head into the medbay once the mining party had returned, and his gaze instantly settled onto Ratchet. “We’re back, Sir! We filled twenty crates today!”

“That’s wonderful, Click Bait,” Ratchet said with a gentle smile back to the Vehicon. “Good job.”

“Thanks!” Click Bait replied, and he eyed Knock Out’s frame across the medbay momentarily, without a word, before he quickly turned and disappeared from the doorway. In a matter of seconds, however, his vocalizer could be heard again from just outside the exit, this time following a short, human yelp of surprise. “Oh! I’m sorry, Ma’am! I didn’t see you there!”

“It’s fine!” June said as she all but slumped against the door frame, her gaze still focused upwards at the departing Vehicon as she tried to calm her nerves and smile and wave to the bot as though it had not just scared the hell out of her for stepping so close. She took a few minutes to steady herself before she smoothed both her hands down the tan-colored sweater she wore over her scrubs, then finally glanced into the medbay to find Ratchet blinking at her.

“Hello, June. Are you alright?” Ratchet asked.

“I’m good!” June said as she gave Ratchet a smile and stepped into the medbay towards him. “Doing great, actually, I’m just… still not used to seeing the Vehicons walking around in here, I guess,” she glanced back to the doorway at that, and to the two other Vehicons she could see stacking crates on the far side of the main hangar.

Ratchet followed her gaze before he shrugged. “They’re actually quite pleasant, once you get to know them.”

“Sure,” said June, though she was clearly not convinced of that herself. “I was just stopping by to grab some paperwork from Bill and thought I’d say hi,” she continued as she stepped closer to Ratchet, then paused once she spotted Knock Out across the way. Her eyes narrowing slightly, she crossed her arms over her chest before calling over to him. “Hello, Knock Out.”

Slowly peeking over his shoulder, Knock Out gave the human a small glare as he muttered a very quiet, “Hullo,” before he moved from his stool and made a B-line for the exit. No way was he sticking around to be yelled at again. He stopped by the doorway as he turned his attention to Ratchet. “Shut the detector off and I’ll go help the Vehicons stack the Energon crates.”

“You’re not supposed to be lifting heavy things,” Ratchet said, very aware of Knock Out’s true motive behind wanting to leave the room.

“Then I’ll only pick up the _small_ ones.”

“ _Sit_ back down.”

Knock Out gave Ratchet a look of betrayal before he scowled and casually stepped back to reclaim his seat on the stool, and Ratchet rolled his optics at the sulk he was certain Knock Out was making, though he could not see it as the mech had once again turned his back to them.

June had stood her ground, even when Knock Out got close, because she knew there was no way the ‘Con would try anything, not with Ratchet there. And besides that, she’d recently heard he might actually have one _very_ tiny, decent circuit left in his body. “Knock Out, Jack mentioned you might have something you want to tell me,” she said, watching as the bot’s entire frame cringed at her statement, as though he’d been struck in the back of the head. And when he failed to give her a verbal response, she too rolled her eyes as she was suddenly reminded of scolding a small child for their bad behavior. Weren’t most Transformers _millions_ of years old? June had never asked any of the Autobots what the Transformer-to-human age conversion was, but she’d always assumed they were all “adults”. Well, except Smokescreen, obviously.

“ _Do_ you?” June finally asked when the silence in the medbay had lasted long enough.

Knock Out vented a sigh as he tilted his head back to look at the ceiling above. The stupid kid had told her. _God. Dammit._ It had been embarrassing enough that he’d let June’s verbal assault get to him, and even worse when Jack found him whimpering like an idiot in his cell, but now that June apparently knew that, his humiliation was tenfold. And now, as Ratchet sat silently by, he was just as certain that the old Medic had probably been told as well, or he would have been asking questions. Knock Out shuttered his optics and silently prayed that the Earth would get sucked into a black hole _right_ at that very moment, so that he did not have to endure sitting there any longer, but when five nano-klicks had gone by and they were all, unfortunately, still alive, he opened his optics again to stare down at the data pad in front of him and mutter, “I’m sorry.”

Ratchet tsked at Knock Out’s response. “Oh, for Prime’s sake, Knock Out. Stop acting like a Sparkling and _look_ at her when you apologize,” he grumbled as he shifted off his stool to lean down and place the back of his hand onto the floor, allowing June to step up onto his palm before he slowly rose and carefully placed her at the end of one of the Energon crystal sorting tables that had been set up in the medbay. “Try again.”

Was Ratchet aware that he’d just swapped Primus’s name for his Amica Endura, or had that been done on purpose? Knock Out was not sure whether it was intentional or not, but the designation had him feeling that familiar weight on his shoulders again, and then suddenly Ratchet’s words from earlier that morning were all but flashing across his HUD like a warning: _You need to start working on it **now,** not later. Not after your tribunal. **Now.** Do you understand?_

Venting another sigh, Knock Out finally moved from the stool and stepped over to the table, placing his hand on the opposite end of it from where June stood. He drummed his fingers on the metal surface, now suddenly nervous that regardless of what he said, he would not be believed, no matter how genuine he was. He flicked his optics to Ratchet, who was standing behind June, his servos crossed over his chest as he waited expectantly. Primus, why was it apparently so much more difficult to apologize when there was no one kicking his faceplates in? How did _that_ make any sense?

Knock Out winced at the headache this entire cycle had given him, and he brought his hand to his brow to squeeze his fingers and thumb at the sides of his helm before he finally flicked his gaze down to June. “Listen huma—, _June,”_ he quickly corrected himself as he set his hand on the table once more, “I know that you probably won’t believe me, but I used to like Earth. I lived here peaceably for many centuries during the war, before I signed on with Decepticons. I didn’t want to see it destroyed,” he flicked his gaze away from her then, focusing on the small flakes of crystallized Energon that were left on the table from yesterday’s sorting. “The ultimate destruction of your planet and its inhabitants was never my intent. That being said, I am sorry for my part in bringing our war to your doorstep, and for the irreparable damage that caused. And I am sorry that I put your life and the lives of your family unit at risk. I was under orders,” Knock Out quickly looked to June again, who he noted had not stopped giving him a cold stare, though he really expected no less. “I was under orders,” he repeated, “but I realize that’s not a sufficient excuse. _I_ would not accept that as an excuse, either.” He paused, opened his mouth to say something, then began to second-guess himself and stopped short again, because while he was sincerely apologetic for all that he stated thus far, one part of June’s rant had struck him harder than all the rest that evening. And although it had taken him several hours to sort through his anger, he eventually came to the realization that thanks to his actions, he and June actually had something in common that made him feel so guilty his spark hurt.

Tapping his fingers on the tabletop again, Knock Out cleared his vocalizer to reset it, and he nervously eyed Ratchet and then June once more before speaking. “You said you have nightmares. On Cybertron we call those ‘false recalls’. I also have false recalls of red optics coming for me in the dark. I know exactly how terrifying that is, so…” he quickly looked away again, highly doubting she would take his word for it, but to hell with it, he’d tried, at least no one could say he hadn’t tried. “I’m sorry that the optics that haunt you belong to me. I’m sorry to have brought that fear into your life, you don’t appear to be deserving of it.”

Knock Out dared one more glance to June before he shook his head and shrugged as if to indicate he could not offer up anything better than that. All of the past four stellar-cycles-worth of difficult conversations were suddenly coming together in his head, and he realized then what the _real_ fear was: That he was as cruel as Pharma, as immoral as Silas, and as traumatizing to others as Megatron, and that those traits were all anyone could see in him anymore. It made him wish he could hide from the universe and himself forever, yet at the same time he was terrified of being ultimately forgotten, much as June had said he would be.

June had been standing on the table, her arms crossed over her chest, looking very much like she could be some human female version of Ratchet, who stood behind her in the exact same position, though she was not aware of it. She had not believed Knock Out’s apology to be genuine, not at first, but the more he talked, and the more he seemed to nervously struggle through his words, the more she started to realize that it was actually possible the bot was telling the truth. She had already written him off the moment she stepped away from his cell the other night, but when Jack had come to her the next morning and told her what he had seen and what Knock Out had told him, she found herself surprisingly willing to give him a second chance. It was not something she had honestly expected she would be able to do, but the feeling had suddenly presented itself to her as if from someone else’s mind entirely.

“I believe you,” June said as she uncrossed her arms and put them into the pockets of her sweater, “and I believe you’re being sincere. So, I accept your apology.” She was not surprised by the wary look Knock Out was now giving her at her words, she could not fault him for that. She sighed herself now, and looked at the table between them before lifting her gaze back up to him. That was the thing with kids, right? You had to set good examples for them. “I also want to apologize. I realized later on that I…I may have gone off the rails a little bit back there. I’ve been holding all of that in for a while, so…I’m sorry for some of the things I said. I know not everything that happened is your fault, and yes, you’re a ‘Con…you _were_ a ‘Con, but you’re _here_ now, and…you seem to want to make things right. I’m sorry for what I said about all of that,” June frowned as she stared up at the optics that were no longer looking at her. “It’s just really hard, you know? It’s been really hard.”

“Yes, it has,” Knock Out agreed, and he did not realize how weary his vocalizer sounded as he spoke. He took a step back from the table, though paused to say one more thing. “Thank you for your apology,” then he turned to move back to his station at the counter.

June watched him go before she mentally shook herself free from the intensity of the conversation, quickly checked her watch, then turned to look back up to Ratchet. “Well, I have to get back to work,” she said, and she stepped back up into Ratchet’s palm when he instantly offered it, and he carried her back to the floor.

“Thank you for stopping by, June,” Ratchet said as he watched her step off.

June offered Ratchet a nod and a smile before she stepped to the doorway, though she did pause to glance across the medbay to where Knock Out sat. “Good-Bye, Knock Out,” she called, not expecting any response, so she was surprised when the bot actually gave a peek over his bare left shoulder to her and replied.

“Good-Bye.”

June nodded again before she walked out of the medbay, and as Ratchet maneuvered himself back onto his stool, he gave a brief glance back to over to Knock Out. “Well, well,” he said with a small smile before he went back to sorting through the stack of slides, “he _can_ be taught.”


	32. A Notice

The notice from Ultra Magnus appeared in First Aid’s external message inbox one morning in mid-October. First Aid was surprised the mech had personally contacted him at all, as most of the Commander’s communications were usually through Ratchet or Bumblebee, but as he opened the message on his data pad and skimmed through the first few lines of Cybertronian script, he suddenly realized why the bot had chosen to go through _him_ this time: _He_ was not a member of the newly formed Council, and this official message was for Knock Out. They had not allowed Knock Out access to any personal external messaging systems, and Knock Out had quite openly stated that he did not care, he had no one to contact anyway. Thus, First Aid had been sent the official notice from the Councilmembers, with instructions to deliver it to the ex-‘Con.

First Aid glanced up from the data pad and looked out from his spot atop one of the empty Energon crates that filled half of the hangar’s main bay toward the three Vehicons. They had fanned themselves out across whatever space was left in the hangar to play Lob-ball, a game they had never heard of until Bumblebee introduced it to them the first cycle they took off from working in the mines. In fact, the very concept of _having_ a cycle off from work had been foreign to them, and they had stood around the hangar for an hour looking guilty for not being busy, which was what had prompted Bumblebee to teach them the sport to begin with.

“Hang on,” Click Bait said, holding up a slim-fingered hand to put the game on hold as he moved over to the comm station to fiddle with the dials there, hitting “replay” on the song “Life is a Highway” by Tom Cochrane.

_“Again?”_ said Task Manager, and though one could not see his optics rolling behind his visor, it was quite obvious from the way he shook his head that he was doing so. “Play ‘Shut Up and Drive’ by Rihanna, _that’s_ a good song.”

“No, play ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol,” said Steve as he paused from lobbing the large metal ball at Click Bait while he fiddled with the screen.

“No way, that song is sad, I don’t like it,” Click Bait quickly shook his head as he moved back to his spot, and the song began blasting through the speakers for the sixth time that morning.

First Aid smirked to their banter as he hopped off the Energon crate and made his way toward the medbay. Although it was their day off, Ratchet and Bumblebee had Bridged to Cybertron early that morning, for what reason Fist Aid had not initially known, but now that he’d received the notice from Ultra Magnus and the Council, their trip made sense.

Through the medbay’s single, wide glass window that First Aid had rolled back the shutters on that morning, he could see Knock Out sitting at his now usual spot in one corner of the room as he flicked through the screens of one of several data pads stacked around him on the counter. First Aid had told him, repeatedly, that no one was expecting him to study every day of the week, that he deserved a break just like any other bot, but Knock Out had ignored him and insisted on being allowed access to the medical texts anyway.

As he stepped through the doorway, First Aid could not help the small pulse of apprehension that seeped from his EM field at the news he was about to deliver. He knew Knock Out would not “shoot the messenger”, but First Aid was already priming the best calming signature sequence he could come up with, knowing where this conversation was headed.

Knock Out glanced over his shoulder at the sound of First Aid’s footsteps, and he vented a sigh as he turned on the stool to face him. “What will it take from me for you to permanently delete that MP3 file off of that comm grid out there?” he asked. “They _do_ know that other music exists, _don’t_ they?”

“Of course they do,” First Aid said with a smile as he moved to stand beside Knock Out at the counter, and he shrugged, “they just really like anything that has to do with vehicles.”

“Yes, and there are a _million other_ songs about vehicles they could be accessing instead,” Knock Out scoffed as he looked back to his data pad.

“Yeah,” First Aid said, pausing nervously for a moment before he spoke again, “I uh _...*ahem*,_ I have a message for you, from Ultra Magnus, regarding your tribunal,” he stopped again, to let that sink in when Knock Out blinked back to him immediately, now giving him his full attention. “The Council has been formed,” First Aid handed his data pad to Knock Out and at the same time began to reach with his EM field to try and gauge whatever Knock Out’s internal reaction would be. “This is your hearing notice and the list of charges being brought against you.”

Knock Out gave the data pad a blank stare, his optics going wide before he quickly blinked back to First Aid. He did not read the notice yet, as he was honestly afraid to look. “Who’s on the Council?”

“Er…Ultra Magnus, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, Rodimus Prime,” First Aid said, recalling the names he’d read from the message.

“Tsk, _Rodimus Prime,”_ Knock Out grumbled, interrupting First Aid before he could continue with the rest of the names, “you mean _Hot Rod?_ They’re letting someone with _that_ level of immaturity sit on the Council? Primus, why not just let _Smokescreen_ sit on it as well?” Knock Out had encountered Rodimus Prime, the mech formerly known as Hot Rod, several times during the war. He could still remember the first time he had seen the bot, back in those early Neutral days when Knock Out and Breakdown were still roaming the galaxy. They had stopped off on one of those small, obscure planets with a name like “XB64” or something, to refuel and restock. It had been full of everyone else trying to escape the war, and later that evening while sitting inside the planet’s only Energon dinning facility, Breakdown had pointed to the bright orange and yellow mech and said, “Look, Knocks! There’s another fancy sports car, just like you!” Knock Out had taken one narrow-eyed look at the flashy, fiery paint job and glistening, chrome-plated exhaust pipes and the arrangement of the armor plating so that the rear spoiler flared like wings and said, “I don’t like him.”

“Metalhawk,” First Aid continued, and that brought Knock Out back into reality from the recall.

“Who?”

“A Neutral that just flew in a few deca-cycles ago. He’s kind of their official spokesbot,” First Aid said with a shrug, then he reached a hand to tilt the data pad Knock Out held back in his direction so he could read the screen, for he had forgotten who the last bot was. “Oh, and Prowl.”

“Prowl!?” Knock Out gaped, now finally looking to the data pad himself with wide optics. “ _Prowl’s_ sitting on the Council!?”

“Well, sure?” First Aid blinked to the paranoia and surprise clouding Knock Out’s EM field. “He’s Autobot High Command, he even outranks Ultra Magnus. What’s wrong with Prowl, I mean, other than the fact that he used to be your enemy?”

Knock Out blinked back up to First Aid, as though he’d forgotten the mech was there, and quickly tried to make up an excuse for his reaction, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell First Aid the truth. “He’s just…you know…so _authoritative_ and _full_ of himself. He’s like another Ultra Magnus but with a shorter fuse,” which wasn’t exactly a lie.

First Aid would not ever consider himself a “Knock Out expert”, but he’d been around the bot long enough now to know when he wasn’t telling the whole story. Being able to get precise readings of his EM field helped, of course. “How would _you_ know?” First Aid asked, one ridge of his optical visor perking upwards.

“Hey, you run into bots from time to time during the war, you pick up on their personality traits,” Knock Out said defensively before he turned back down to the data pad and began to read, his red optics flicking back and forth across the screen and becoming increasingly narrowed with each line they passed over, until he reached the charges, which he read aloud. “The Cybertronian Council alleges that: You were a Decepticon during the Great War for 1.4 million years; You provided direct support and material aid to the Decepticon cause during that time and; On the basis of the foregoing, you are hereby charged with the following: _Fifteen_ counts of Homicide!?” Knock Out gasped as he looked to First Aid once more.

“The _Vehicons,_ Knock Out,” First Aid said, trying to remind him of his wrongdoing and yet remain sympathetic for his outrage at the same time. ”The Vehicons you _killed_ for their parts?”

Knock Out started to growl, then he quickly shook his head and went back to reading the rest of the charges. It would do no good to argue over them with First Aid, he knew that. “Interplanetary Alien and Cybertronian Smuggling,” he continued, “Alien and Cybertronian Torture, Alien and Cybertronian Kidnapping, Appropriation and Destruction of Cybertonian Historical Artifacts, Impersonation of a Licensed Medical Professional, _five thousand counts_ of Corpse Desecration!?” he scoffed at the data pad again, “Oh, come ON! That’s _ridiculous!_ Who came up with _that_ number!?” probably Prowl, Mr. Statistical Analysis himself. _Slag._ “....Espionage, Hostage Taking, Pillaging, Ransom Demand, Receipt of Stolen Goods, Sabotage, Theft, and the _Wanton_ Destruction of Alien and Cybertronian Property,” Knock Out said, his optics going wide again as the realization of what he was up against and the time he could be facing suddenly hit him like one of Megatron’s fists. He slowly set the data pad down on the counter as he stared off across the room with a look of shock. “Oh fuck.”

First Aid was cringing under his face mask. He was not sure if Knock Out was eyeing the doorway or not. Would the bot really try to run? He immediately forced his calming signature outward and tried to reign the ex-‘Con’s attention back in before he did something stupid. “Knock Out,” First Aid said, and he was silently thankful when the mech blinked back to him, “don’t forget that these are _only_ the charges. Your sentencing will be based on what the Council sees as appropriate and what type of plea you enter. Since this is the first hearing, you’ll be required to enter your plea and then—”

“Yes _, I know_ how Cybertronian law works, First Aid,” Knock Out finally spoke as he slapped his hand over his shuttered optics and heaved a vented sigh.

“Great. So, then you know that if you plead guilty, the Council will move directly to sentencing, and if you plead not guilty, it moves on to a full trial,” said First Aid as he watched Knock Out carefully. “Once the outcome of the trial and sentencing is established, that’s when the Council will vote on whether or not you can officially join us as an Autobot after you’ve completed your sentence…whatever that might be.”

Knock Out peeked through his fingers to First Aid. “How many votes do I need?”

“Two-thirds majority.”

“Five out of seven. _Great._ Primus, how is this trial even _fair!?”_ Knock Out let his hand drop back to the countertop as he looked to First Aid again. “There’s no one to defend my _alleged_ actions but me, and we _all know_ that _no one_ sitting on that Council trusts me! I have no evidence! No witnesses! No public defender! Not that I would trust any _‘Bot_ to be one,” he glared, “but that’s fine, I can represent myself.”

First Aid vented a sigh, still trying to offer Knock Out some minor signature of comfort, though it was clearly doing no good. “That’s your call, but you _do_ have evidence and witnesses, actually, and they’re both guaranteed to be true, whether you like it or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“A Mnemosurgeon arrived on Cybertron last week,” First Aid started, and then quickly held up a hand to Knock Out when the bot gave him a look like that meant absolutely nothing regarding his currently situation. “He’s offered to inject you. All memories he recovers from your brain node are admissible in court. He can corroborate your testimony and—”

“ _Mnemosurgery?_ ” Knock Out sneered, “You mean like what they did with Shockwave? You mean _Shadowplay?”_

“This isn’t Shadowplay,” First Aid was quick to reply, “Chromedome would only be _looking_ at your memories, not _changing_ them.”

“You want me to give a bot free access to my memory banks? My entire _life’s_ worth of memories open for his viewing pleasure?” Knock Out shook his head and waved First Aid away with his hand. “ _No_ fragging way! I’ve got _private things_ in there that I don’t feel like sharing!”

First Aid sighed again as he tried desperately to counter Knock Out’s signature with his own, but it was proving difficult. “If you give Chromedome specific dates he can stay within those parameters of your memory. You could tell him to only search the past 1.4 million years, only for as long as you were a Decepticon, that’s _all_ you’re on trial for. And he’s bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, just like Medics are. All he’d be allowed to say is whether or not you’re telling the truth during the trial, like a living lie-detector test.”

“Oh, and we should all just assume that _he’s_ being truthful when he ‘corroborates my testimony’?” Knock Out shook his head again and looked to the floor almost hopelessly. “What if _he’s_ lying?”

“He wouldn’t,” First Aid tried to reassure him, “he has no reason to.”

“Is he an _Autobot?”_ Knock Out countered.

“Yes, but—"

“I’m not doing it.”

“Knock Out, _please_ think it over,” First Aid said as he dared to place a hand on Knock Out’s servo to not only attempt to better-transfer his calming signature, but to insinuate how important this choice was. “This will _help_ you! This will prove your honesty as long as you actually _are_ honest! You can build credibility this way! You can _build_ trust! You think you didn’t kill fifteen bots for their parts or desecrate five thousand corpses? Then let Chromedome search your memory banks and _prove_ it.”

Knock Out eyed First Aid’s hand on his arm, and Pharma’s warning instantly crossed his processor, quickly prompting him to pull his servo away so that he could bury his face in his hand again. “What if he goes in there and the numbers are higher….”

First Aid had fully expected Knock Out to shy away from his touch, but he had not expected what the mech said. He had not even considered it, that it was just as possible that Knock Out had killed more bots and raided more corpses than what the Council had estimated. _“Are_ they?” he asked, and he could not help the look of disappointment he was giving.

“I don’t _know!_ I didn’t keep count! What if they _are_ and I just can’t remember? Just because the info is in there doesn’t mean I have access to it,” Knock Out glared at the face First Aid was giving him, and he tapped his finger upside his own helm, “you know how it works! Would you allow him into _your_ brain node?”

“If it meant helping my defense in court? Absolutely.”

Knock Out set his elbow joint onto the counter so that he could support his head in his hand as he muttered, “I won’t need a good defense if I just plead guilty.” He shifted his optics to the stacks of data pads filled with medical texts. He hadn’t legitimately been studying them since Ratchet mentioned the CMLE, contrary to what he’d been telling the others, he’d simply been using them as an excuse not to be bothered.

“Look,” First Aid said as he tried to get Knock Out to focus on the positive, “you’ve done _good_ things too, and that will be taken into consideration.”

“It won’t be enough,” Knock Out groaned as he shuttered his optics.

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m not _stupid,_ First Aid,” Knock Out said as he quickly opened his optics again to glare to the smaller mech, despite his belief that he was in fact intellectually inferior to him in every way but one. “It won’t be enough.”

First Aid vented a sigh. “I never said you were stupid, and there’s still time.”

“Time for what? What else can I _possibly_ do to turn things in my favor? I don’t have anything else to give you or show you or tell you! I’ve already given you everything on the Nemesis I knew about or had access to! I told you every location for every single one of Shockwave’s laboratories I could think of!” Knock Out said, though he made a point not to mention the chemical weapons he had revealed to Ratchet and Ironhide. “I don’t know what else to do! I don’t know what else there is!”

“And you saved my _life,_ and _Bumblebee’s_ life. And you stopped Starscream from taking over the Nemesis, and without you we would have never gotten the comms working,” First Aid could sense Knock Out’s tension beginning to slowly dissipate. “But I think maybe you should start looking beyond the _physical_ things you can offer and start working on the _subjective_ things and the _verbal_ _reparations_ you can offer, if you do in fact want to offer them.”

“You sound suspiciously like Ratchet,” Knock Out narrowed his gaze to First Aid at that.

“You gave June an apology, didn’t you?”

“Boy, things aren’t kept under wraps around here for very long, _are_ they?”

“I think it was _good_ that you did that, don’t you?”

His optics shifting back to the counter below him once more, Knock Out simply shrugged. If by “good” First Aid was insinuating it should have made him _feel_ good, it had in fact made him feel even worse, as his processor now had plenty of room for the guilt to work its way through.

“Didn’t you mean it?” First Aid asked.

“Of course I did,” Knock Out rolled his optics, “but that’s not _enough,_ don’t you see? _None_ of it will _ever_ be enough!” he looked back to First Aid, now gesturing with his hand. “Apologies don’t…rebuild cities or take back past actions or…or bring bots back from the dead!”

“And yet we still offer them when we’re trying to make amends, and when we receive them from someone else when they’ve wronged us, it makes us feel better. It doesn’t matter that they don’t do anything for us physically, _mentally,_ they still make a difference, _that’s_ why it’s so important that you gave that to June,” said First Aid, and Knock Out gave a weary glance elsewhere and shrugged again. “C’mon, isn’t there _anyone_ out there that you feel owes _you_ an apology for something, and wouldn’t you feel better if they gave it to you?”

“Oohh, it’s gonna take a _lot_ more than a Goddamn _apology_ from certain bots to make _me_ feel better,” Knock Out’s anger flared again as several mechs came to mind. He would have accepted their apologies only if they were being spoken as their last words while he was drilling holds into their skulls. “And _excuse_ me,” Knock Out said with a glare, shifting a nice little defensive signature of irritation around himself to keep First Aid away, “but when did this turn into a therapy session? And what _difference_ do apologies make when I’m slated to spend the next I-don’t-know-how-many-vorns behind bars for all of these charges? I’m fragged either way.” Knock Out shook his head as he shut off the data pad below him. “Maybe I’ll opt for spark extraction. I’ve heard that’s always been an option for serving time, as long as you plead guilty in court. Primus knows I need a fragging vacation.”

“You wouldn’t seriously consider that, would you?” said a voice from the doorway, and both Knock Out and First Aid turned towards it to see Bumblebee crossing the threshold into the medbay.

Knock Out quickly gave First Aid a look that suggested he did _not_ want to be left alone with Bumblebee, but First Aid was headed towards the exit before he could get his point across.

“I’d better go check on the Vehicons,” said First Aid as he passed Bumblebee, “it got awfully quiet out there.”

“Would you really have your spark extracted and stored in a holding tank, even after what Optimus did to bring us back?” Bumblebee said as he moved closer to the counter, once First Aid was well out of audial-range. His tone was not exactly accusatory, but he was giving Knock Out that face that the ex-‘Con had now come to absolutely loathe, that “explain yourself” look that was somehow much more invasive and guilt-inducing than Ratchet’s similar expression. “We show you your list of charges and this is what you immediately jump to as the best answer? Spark extraction?”

“Did you even _read_ this?” Knock Out narrowed his gaze as he tapped his pointy finger against the now-dark screen of the data pad. “Do you understand what this is? You all could put me away for _vorns_ on this! _Thousands_ of years!”

“Of course I read it, and yes I’m aware of what your sentencing _may_ entail,” Bumblebee said, though he did not meet Knock Out’s anger with his own, having learned deca-cycles ago that if he let the bot rant unchallenged for long enough, he would eventually burn himself out on it. “I’m just surprised you’d rather spend _any_ amount of time in a vacuum-sealed canister than actually, physically living, after all we’ve been through and all that was offered to us. Optimus wanted us to make him proud. How will you do that from a jar on a shelf?”

It angered Knock Out even more that Bumblebee had taken to refusing to raise his vocalizer, no matter what Knock Out was yelling about at any given moment. He had not resorted to name calling yet, but Knock Out was fairly certain he could have cursed the Autobot Earth Commander out with words that would have made a Wrecker blush, and Bumblebee still would not get angry. “How does me sitting in a cell for vorns make Optimus _proud_ , unless he meant that in the sense that he’ll be _proud_ to see at least _one_ Decepticon behind bars paying the price for our part in four million years of war?” he asked, as though daring Bumblebee to come up with a better explanation.

“That’s not what he meant at all. He said it was a second chance.”

“Oh, yes, a _fine_ second chance this has turned out to be for the both of us!” Knock Out gestured to Bumblebee with his hand. “You without a T-cog and me rusting away in a cell! What a _difference_ we’re making for ourselves and for everyone else and for Cybertron by being here!”

Bumblebee simply shook his head, his vocalizations still calm. “Everything we’re going through right now is temporary, I won’t let you rust away in a cell, and it won’t be like this forever.”

“No? Because it _seems_ like it will. Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way.”

“I _do_ feel that way sometimes,” Bumblebee freely admitted, “but I also know that nothing is constant. Things are changing so fast these cycles, nothing is permanent, Knock Out. You just have to be patient and believe things will work out.” He watched as Knock Out shook his head and leaned his forehelm into his hand once more, and Bumblebee felt the fury in the ex-‘Con’s EM field finally fizzle out, as he’d predicted it would. The mech would only stay angry if you got angry along _with_ him. Bumblebee had tried explaining that to Ratchet, but the old Medic thought his analysis was ridiculous. Bumblebee was not surprised.

Knock Out’s mind drifted to his earlier conversation with Arcee, about how worried she was at finding a new place in society, and how immediately unwilling she’d been to his suggestion that they take off together again, just like old times. But of course she would want to stay. She had friends here, she had a place here, even if she didn’t believe it, and Knock Out knew he had the exact opposite. He huffed, rubbing his fingers against his forehelm as he felt Bumblebee’s EM field begin to encroach upon his own. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have taken that light from Prime’s hand,” Knock Out finally admitted, and he sent a quick glare to Bumblebee at that, like it was all his fault. “Do you ever feel like _that?”_

Bumblebee knew Knock Out would hate the look of pity he was now giving him, but he couldn’t help it. He knew he could not truly understand what the ex’-Con was going through, or what he would soon have to face; he could not put himself in this bot’s peds, and it was hard to watch him suffer for the consequences of 1.4 million years’ worth of bad choices and horrible decisions. But all of that was not something Knock Out could simply walk away from, either. “No, I don’t feel like that. I’m glad I’m still here, T-cog or not. But I _am_ sorry that _you_ feel that way.”

_Sure, just rub it in with the pretentiousness and apologies!_ Misreading Bumblebee’s words completely, Knock Out prickled with anger again as he covered his shuttered optics with his hand. “Well, I guess I’m not as _strong_ as you are.”

“I didn’t mean to insinuate that I’m stronger than you,” Bumblebee said, “but even if that was true, there’s nothing wrong with it. No one here is going to fault you for not feeling strong all of the time. Take it from someone who had to learn that the hard way,” Bumblebee vented a sigh then as he recalled how long he had kept the fact that Megatron had invaded his mind from the other ‘Bots because he was worried that they would call him out on his lack of strength to control the Decepticon warlord, and how much sanity that had cost him. “I was so certain they were all going to judge me and—” Bumblebee stopped himself then and shook his head as he simultaneously glanced away and casually reached out to place a hand on Knock Out’s armorless back, as he would have with any bot he was having such a serious conversation with. “Primus, you know what I’m talking about. You saw it.”

Knock Out stilled at the warm palm and fingers on his bare protoflesh. The wounds there had long since healed, so it was not any sort of pain that made his frame go tense for a moment, it was that damn sensation of calm again, of total peace that he’d now experienced three times, whenever Bumblebee touched him. It made his spark thrum happily in its chamber and his shoulders feel light and the pain in his aching spinal cables from his unequal weight distribution disappear completely, yet at the same time he was convinced that it was a trick and that everything he was feeling was fake and being somehow manufactured with the purpose of forcing him to drop his guard so that Bumblebee could…well, what? What _were_ Bumblebee’s hidden intentions, if he even really had any? Knock Out removed his hand from his optics so that he could blink to the bot in question, but the inquisitive stare that Bumblebee was giving in return immediately told Knock Out that not only did the mech clearly have no ulterior motive, but that he also apparently had no idea what his touch was capable of.

“What? What is it?” Bumblebee asked, concern filling his faceplates and EM field.

Knock Out simply stared for a moment before he suddenly looked away and gave a quick shrug, which prompted Bumblebee to remove his hand. “I uhh…” Knock Out started, paused, and then thought better of saying anything about it, because there was no real sane, safe way of acknowledging what he was feeling without implying some sort of sexual connotation with it, and that was _not_ what he was going for, despite his primary function. He changed the subject completely, to something that he had already been considering anyway. “I want a word with your little human pets.”

“They’re not _pets_ , they’re our _friends_ ,” Bumblebee gently corrected for what he was certain was the tenth or eleventh time since their return to Earth. “What is it that you want to say to them?”

“I just want to speak to them… _privately_.” Knock Out didn’t need to put on a show with what he intended to say to them. He didn’t want an audience of Autobots watching. “I need to apologize to them…for all the slag I’ve done,” he shook his head and eyed the dark-screened data pad once more. “I’m sure they won’t care, but I…feel like I need to do it anyway.”

“Okay,” Bumblebee quickly nodded, needing no more explanation than that, though he gave Knock Out an apologetic look. “I know it isn’t ideal, but…if you want to speak to them alone, privately, you’ll need to be in your cell, and only if they’re willing. I’m not going to try and force them. Some of them are still a little afraid of you, and I don’t want them to feel threatened. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it’s going to have to be.”

“That’s fine,” Knock Out said, though he shook his head slightly, recalling the initial fear in June’s eyes before she’d snapped. “I get it. If I was them, I wouldn’t trust me, either.”


	33. A Witness - Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got long, as so many of them are now, so I've split it up into two parts.
> 
> ***WARNING* There are needles in this chapter. It’s not anything horrific, and I didn’t get super detailed with it, but I just thought I’d mention it here, because I understand some people can’t handle anything regarding needles, and I respect that. If you are one of those people, you’d best skip this chapter and scroll down to the author’s notes at the end, where I’ve created a chapter summary.**

Chromedome’s optics scanned the Nevada desert horizon through the yellow tint of his visor. He had not been back to Earth in centuries, and he found the humans’ structural upgrades to their planet confusing. Why did they use such soft materials like wood and cloth in some areas when they had so much iron ore at their disposal? Why hadn’t they figured out how to utilize their planet’s Energon deposits yet? And why, after all this time, was their moon the _only_ other surface that they had reached within their solar system?

“And you _like_ it here?” Chromedome said as he glanced back to First Aid, who stood at his side as the pair surveyed the setting sun that cast shadows over the land surrounding Hangar E.

“I do,” First Aid said with a smile before he turned back to the orange, tan, and white-colored mech that stood about a half-meter taller than himself. “The Earthlings have their own problems, sure, but there’s something almost…peaceful about this place.”

“Ahh, the exact opposite of Cybertron then, I think I understand now,” Chromedome chuckled behind his facemask as he turned to head back into the hangar, and First Aid quickly followed. “How long did you live here with Team Prime?”

“About three mega-cycles,” First Aid replied as he paused to close the hangar bay doors before the two started across the room and towards the hallway to the right. “It was nice, all things considered.” Once down the hallway, they stepped into the lift and rode it down to the first sub-level of the building. First Aid offered another smile to the mech. “Thanks for Bridging over, by the way.”

“It’s no problem,” Chromedome shrugged one of his wheeled shoulders. “You really think he’ll go for it?”

“I _hope_ so,” First Aid said as they then stepped from lift and out into the hallway that led towards Knock Out’s cell.

“Well, no offence, but I’m not gonna hold my air intake on this one,” Chromedome glanced down to First Aid with an almost apologetic look behind his visor. “You know how ‘Cons are, always so…”

“…Angry?”

“’Combative’ was more the term I was thinking.”

“Those go hand in hand, I’d say.”

“Fair enough,” Chromedome said as they approached the holding cell, and he went silent when he stepped before the metal bars and stared back at the red optics eyeing him warily from behind them.

Knock Out remained seated on his slab as he eyed the new Autobot up and down. He seemed harmless enough, but it was what the mech’s fingers could do and transform into that was the scary part about him. Knock Out had already spent the better part of the cycle in a state of unease. He had apologized to the children and Agent Fowler earlier and it had been difficult for him to judge whether they believed him. Jack and Miko had seemed indifferent, Agent Fowler had given him a few words about the importance of “doing the right thing.” Rafael had been the only one to thank him and verbally accept his apology, and then he had gone on to thank him one more time, for saving Bumblebee’s life out under the Skyway; the Autobot Commander had clearly told the human what had happened, at least the part that had happened in reality.

And now suddenly here was the Mnemosurgeon to do “a free consultation.” “Just _talk_ to him, please?” First Aid has asked Knock Out several cycles earlier, and Knock Out had eventually, reluctantly agreed.

First Aid glanced between Knock Out and Chromedome before finally speaking up himself, when it appeared that neither bot was going to make introductions. “Knock Out, this is Chromedome, he’s the Mnemosurgeon I told you about.”

Knock Out held the unfamiliar bot’s gaze with his own, as much as he could anyway, with a visored mech. He did not trust the Autobot, though he did trust First Aid’s opinion, and so there was conflict there as he tried to determine what the mech’s true intentions were. Bots didn’t do things like this for free, not where Knock Out came from. “Why would you even offer this to me?” Knock Out asked, his optics narrowing. “I have nothing to offer _you_ in return.”

“I’m not looking for anything in return,” Chromedome replied, not surprised by the question in the least. “You wouldn’t owe me anything for this. I’m offering it because I believe in a fair judicial system, because you have no witnesses or evidence other than yourself, and because, as I’m sure you know, you lack credibility. I believe every bot should be afforded a fair trial, Decepticon or not.”

Knock Out continued to glare as he tried to get a reading from the mech’s signature regarding his sincerity, but he’d never been that good at detecting such things in EM fields, that was more First Aid’s specialty. “Look,” he finally said with a huff, “I don’t want you… _fragging around_ in my mind.”

Chomedome nodded to that, completely understanding his concern. Bots were always apprehensive when it came to Mnemosurgery, it was not a medical procedure to be taken lightly. “This isn’t Shadowplay, Knock Out. I won’t be changing anything in your mind, or erasing any of your memories,” Chromedome shrugged. “If you give me parameters, I’ll happily stay within them. Dates, times, places. The more specific you get, the more I can narrow it down and hone in on what you want me to see. This whole process is much easier on willing, pliable patients anyway.”

Knock Out did his best to hide the shudder that ran through his frame at Chromedome’s last sentence. Was there any bot in history that had _willingly_ allowed a Mnemosurgeon to enter their minds? He finally pulled his gaze away from the other mech and looked down at his peds. “What does it feel like?”

“I’m told it’s like experiencing déjà vu. It won’t hurt, as long as you’re relaxed and willing.”

Knock Out slowly looked up again, his optics focusing in on Chromedome’s white fingers. “How would you go about with the actual…injecting part?”

“I’d go in through the back of your neck, at the base of your helm. If you were dead, I’d opt for going in through the optics, it’s a more direct approach to the brain node, but since you’re not…” Chromedome shrugged again. “There will be scarring, but the puncture marks will only show up under ultraviolet light and are barely visible even then.”

“…Let me see the needles.”

Chromedome stepped closer to the cell and held up his right hand in the space between the bars so that Knock Out could watch as little plates at the tips of Chromedome’s fingers and thumb slid open. Five long, thin needles suddenly sprang forth as they were released from each digit with an eerie *slikt!* sound of metal grating on metal. The needles were widest near the fingertips, but then tapered off into points so fine and sharp that Knock Out was not sure he could actually tell where they ended.

Knock Out tried to keep his paranoia in check as he stared with wide optics at Chromedome’s fingers. He was not afraid of needles, but these were definitely not the type he was used to working around, or to being on the receiving end of. “Are they sterile?” he asked, his optics narrowing once more. “They’d better be.”

“They are, of course,” Chromedome said before he retracted the needles back into his fingertips.

Knock Out could not stop himself from raising his own hand to nervously rub at the back of his neck, just under his red helm. “Like déjà vu, huh. So, I’ll be aware of everything that you’re seeing as you view it?”

“Not necessarily, no.”

“Then how do I know you won’t flip through my memories like an _archive_ _catalogue_  once you’re in there?”

Chromedome shook his head as he spoke. “The outcome of your trial holds no personal value to me. I don’t even know what they’re charging you with. I have no reason to go flipping through your files like that.”

“What about…side-effects? Is this going to permanently frag me up? I _know_ about the Institute,” Knock Out narrowed his gaze once more as he watched the Autobot, “they used to employ Mnemosurgeons, didn’t they? I know what the Functionists had them do to Shockwave. That seems like more than a little ‘déjà vu’ to me.”

“And the fact that all of that clearly disturbs you tells me that you also realize how _immoral and heinous_ it was for the Functionists to have that done to him. Hell, I’d say that already puts you a cut above your average Decepticon. And before you ask, no, I _didn’t_ work for the Institute,” _Not the original one, anyway,_ Chromedome thought, though he did not say it aloud. “But, to answer your question, the most common side-effect is a headache for a few hours afterward. It all depends on how long I’m in there.”

First Aid had been silently standing by up to that point, but now he looked through the bars to Knock Out and sent through them a signature filled with worry and concern as he spoke. “If you don’t allow him to do this, the only thing you have against the charges is your word. I’m not calling you a liar, you _know_ I don’t think that you are, but I’m not the one that needs the convincing. What Chromedome finds might be enough to convince the ones that do.”

Knock Out held First Aid’s gaze for more nano-klicks in a row than he ever had before, then eyed Chromedome again. “And you won’t tell anyone what you see while you’re in there?”

“That’s correct,” said Chromedome. “The doctor-patient confidentiality clause applies here, just like with any other medical procedure. This is for your benefit, not the Council’s. Use the information I gather to bolster your pleadings and your defense. I can only confirm or deny what the Council asks me to verify. I’m not going to offer up information to them freely, even if they ask me for it, that’s not why I’m here. Look,” Chromedome gestured to Knock Out with a hand, “while I’m searching your databanks, if I see something that’s contrary to whatever your charges are, that’s _your_ business, not mine. For example, if I search your memories and I see that at some point you painted yourself green when the Council has alleged that you’ve never been any color other than red, that’s fine, I don’t care, I won’t tell a spark. But if, on the cycle of the trial, they ask you if you’ve ever been any color other than red, and you say ‘no’, and they then ask me to confirm your answer, I _have to tell them_ you’re not telling the truth. I won’t tell them what the truth _is,_ I just have to confirm or deny the validity of your response, understand? All I’m doing is confirming or denying your answers.”

Knock Out vented a sigh as he looked to the floor between his peds one more time, and he considered all that Chromedome had stated thus far. Knock Out had said to First Aid earlier that he was fragged either way, and with nothing left to lose at this point, he supposed he’d be a fool _not_ to take Chromedome up on his offer. “Alright,” he finally conceded as he rubbed at his temples with his fingers, “I’ll do it.”

Chromedome nodded. “You should take a few cycles to compile a list, then. Write down your parameters, any exact dates or memories you want me to seek out while I’m in there. Be specific as possible, please, it will make everything easier, for both of us,” he said, then turned his gaze to First Aid, who was doing well in physically hiding his thankfulness and relief, but not so much with his EM field that was pulsing the same throughout the entire hallway. “Send me an external message whenever he’s ready and then I’ll Bridge back over for the procedure.”

 

Knock Out spent the next two cycles wracking his memory databases for anything he thought might be even remotely useful in building his defense, yet at the same time he did not want to reveal _too much_ to Chromedome, and staying within those guidelines proved to be difficult.

In order for any of his memories to be useful, Knock Out knew he would have to attempt to anticipate what the Council may or may not ask him concerning his past actions and behavior. For some of the Council, like Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Ironhide, it was easy to predict what they might ask him about regarding his crimes, but for the others, Prowl and Ultra Magnus, who would both stick strictly to the letter of the law, and for the one he knew absolutely nothing about, Metalhawk, other than the fact that he was a Neutral, it would be difficult to determine what the mech might be looking for. Rodimus Prime he simply wrote off as being too stupid to understand what a trial even was, so Knock Out assumed the mech would vote the same as whichever member of the Council he liked the most. Here’s hoping that bot was Bumblebee.

Knock Out had already resigned himself to the fact that he was looking at prison time, he knew there was no way around that, but if he could prove that the number of counts against him should be decreased, it could knock entire vorns off of his sentence, hell, he might even be able to finagle immediate parole, if he got really lucky.

In reviewing the charges, he knew he had to do his best to eliminate the big ones: Fifteen counts of homicide and the desecration of five thousand corpses.

Of the first charge, Knock Out could only recall four instances where he had actually pulled the plug on living bots, all of them Vehicons, all of them having been suffering from life-threatening injuries, injuries that Knock Out could have treated, had he not been so low on parts. But he also knew the way that memories created from medbays full of injured, sick and/or dying patients could all swarm together in one’s data bases, so that, over time, the bots on the medslabs became no more than nameless, faceless frames that just needed to be fixed, one way or the other. Knock Out could only remember four instances, the Council was alleging fifteen instances, yet at the same time they could both be wrong. To remedy the discrepancies, Knock Out would request Chromedome to recover from his memories every instance that he had deactivated a bot by his own hand for the sole purpose of harvesting their body parts.

Of the second charge, Knock Out could recall over a thousand separate occasions he’d pulled parts from a corpse, but again, 1.4 million years’ worth of collecting had run together into one long, mostly incoherent memory of unhinging chest plates, digging through tangled nests of wires and Energon lines, removing limbs and servos at their socket joints, and sometimes spending hours picking apart engine blocks and alternators to find one simple little piece that would make all the difference to the quality of life for whatever bot was in dire need of it.

Many times, Knock Out had to concede to the fact that Chromedome knowing some things, however embarrassing, horrible, or revealing they might be of his inner psyche, would not be as bad as spending the next ten vorns behind bars. There was a small part of Knock Out that would have given Chromedome access to everything, it would be like telling someone all of his deepest, darkest secrets without having to actually speak them aloud, and he imagined it might actually feel quite freeing, except that to do so would be to reveal the deepest, darkest secrets of too many other bots as well, and that was not something he was willing to risk.

Knock Out decided he would avoid the date he had administered field repairs to Bumblebee under the Skyway, because he knew both the Autobot Commander and Ratchet would not deny his actions had saved Bumblebee that cycle, though it was also out of a fear that Chromedome might see whatever it was that happened to Knock Out and Bumblebee in the realm beyond death, with Optimus Prime. He would, of course, mention that his actions had saved Bumblebee during the trial, but he would keep Chromedome as far away from the memory of it as possible.

To prove his remorse and desire to switch his allegiance, Knock Out annotated the dates he apologized to June, Agent Fowler and the three children, as well as the date he prevented Starscream from taking over the Nemesis. To prove his commitment to the Autobot cause, Knock Out was allowed, through First Aid, to send an external comm message to Arcee, wherein he requested she gather a logistical data report on the exact numbers of how many Energon crates, weapons, supplies, and hidden external laboratory locations he had provided to the Autobots thus far.

There was also the issue of garnering sympathy and with that, mercy. Knock Out did not like it, not the _actual_ sympathy when it was genuinely given to him by any Autobot, nor the idea that it was in his best interest to try and convince the sitting members of the Council that he was deserving of either, but Knock Out knew how trials worked. He had to convince them that despite what he had done, he was still, somehow, deserving of their empathy, which would play a huge role in determining what his ultimate sentence would be. To that end, Knock Out recalled and annotated the dates of all the times Megatron had resorted to correcting his behavior with violence, whether it had been in response to him attempting to leave the Nemesis for good, for disobeying direct orders, or for the many times he had “screwed up”, as he had once told Smokescreen. Maybe if they all realized, as Ratchet had that first cycle he had reviewed Starscream’s medical files on the CMRD, what being a Decepticon under Megatron’s rule actually entailed, they might be a little more forgiving. Even after Knock Out assumed he had remembered them all, he still asked First Aid if he could double-check his memories against the CMRD, to which the small Medic reluctantly agreed.

And then there were the charges that Knock Out knew there was no getting out of, for there were plenty of witnesses, both on and off of the Council, the most serious among them that he had tortured the human, Silas. Knock Out was hesitant to reveal to Chromedome the dates that spanned the stellar-cycles he had kept the human barely alive. It was not a memory he had honestly ever completely processed himself, because he had told himself the alien scum did not deserve to be preserved in anyone’s memory banks, but in the end, Knock Out wrote down the dates for Chromedome to review anyway. The Autobots held humans in high regard, they would most certainly ask Knock Out why he had tortured one for so many cycles, they would want an explanation for such immoral behavior, and for that, Knock Out decided he would have the truth ready for them, if that’s what it came down to.

Therefore, the one memory Knock Out added to his list of dates that was prior to him joining the Decepticons was the cycle he and Breakdown had completed the Conjux Ritus, the ritual of performing four symbolic acts of affection and kindness to solidify their eternal bonds and become Conjux Endura. The next date he added to his list was the cycle Breakdown was killed. And the date after that, the cycle Knock Out had come across Breakdown’s reactivated frame not as some miracle bot risen from the dead, but as a suit of armor for Silas’s damaged body. _“No one will ever understand your side of the story if you don’t explain it,”_ Ratchet has said, _“You have to **talk** to us.”_ Knock Out was still undecided if he would reveal his true reasoning for torturing the human on the cycle of his trial, but he wanted proof of his word to be at the ready, just in case.

 

Several cycles later, Knock Out sat on a stool in the small side room that was attached to the medbay, his fingers nervously drumming on the data pad that held his list of complied dates and memories. The room appeared to have been an office at one point in time, though the counters and desk were bare and the shelves mostly empty, save for a few dusty beakers and old tools.

First Aid, who was sitting in the room with him, had been singing his praises all morning, telling him he was doing the right thing by allowing Chromedome to search his databanks, reminding him how useful it could be to his defense and credibility, and complimenting him on his willingness to go through with the procedure. It did nothing to calm Knock Out’s nerves, and he was five nano-klicks away from telling First Aid to frag off completely when the Autobot suddenly raised a hand, his other tapping a finger against the side of his helm as he listed to an inner-comm he was receiving.

“I’ll be right there,” First Aid responded to the comm before he dropped his hands back to his sides and looked to Knock Out. “Chromedome’s Bridged over. I’ll go get him and then you two can get started,” he nodded with a smile and then turned to go.

“Wait!” Knock Out surprised even himself by reaching out to grab First Aid by the servo, Pharma’s warning be damned, though he quickly withdrew his hand as the other mech paused to look back at him expectantly. “I just, um…Will you stay in here with me while he does this? Please? Just to make sure he doesn’t do anything fragged up, you know?” Knock Out asked, though his growing fear of the entire thing was becoming fairly obvious as he struggled to keep his EM field in check. And First Aid, being who he was, merely smiled and felt no need to address the real, obvious reasoning behind Knock Out’s request.

“Of course.”

It did not take long for First Aid to return to the small room with Chromedome in tow. The Mnemosurgeon gave Knock Out a nod in greeting before requesting to see the list on the data pad, which Knock Out reluctantly handed over.

“Okay,” Chromedome said, though more to himself, after he had scrolled through the screens for several klicks, “okay,” he repeated, then turned back to Knock Out as he set the data pad down onto the countertop. “Just turn around and face the counter so I have you at a good angle. If you want me to stop at any time, just say so, alright? I’m not forcing you to do this. No one is forcing you to do this.”

Knock Out nodded to that before he slowly turned on the stool to face the counter, and he could not help wince at the *slikt* sound of the needles behind him as he sat up straighter in his seat. Out of the corner of his optic, he saw First Aid standing beside him to his right, and he resisted the urge to grab the mech’s servo again.

“Try to stay still,” said Chromedome as he placed his left hand onto the protoflesh of Knock Out’s left shoulder before he carefully pushed the five needles from the fingers and thumb if his right hand into the base of Knock Out’s skull, just under the red helm.

Knock Out was the eight-thousand-seven-hundred-and-sixty-eighth bot Chromedome had ever injected, and he would not be the last. By now, Chromedome had seen it all. He had delved into the minds of serial killers, searched the dormant brain nodes of corpses in an attempt to recover the memories of their final living moments, and helped many bots work through the difficulties of psychological trauma by recovering repressed memories from their databanks.

What Chromedome found as he skimmed through Knock Out’s brain node was nothing new or unexpected. He started sorting through the memories of pulling parts from corpses first, annotating each instance he found onto his own internal notepad as he tallied them up. He did not find the images flashing across his HUD disturbing in the slightest. They were, in fact, rather tame compared to some of the memories he had been “witness” to in the past. He then moved on to two dates Knock Out had listed in which he apologized to the humans. Those memories were recent and strong, though Chromedome instantly noted there were components of them missing, each memory incomplete in that they read like an emotionless dialogue. _Interesting._

Next, Chromedome sought after the memories wherein Knock Out deactivated bots for their parts, and again there was nothing that surprised him. He had seen bots deactivate others with far more malicious intent and cruelty than what he saw through Knock Out’s memories, though there was one instance that made him finally pause in his search, and he left the memory hanging in front of Knock Out’s internal HUD like a painted canvas as he analyzed it. The picture was of the medbay on the Nemesis, about two-thousand years ago, where Knock Out stood hovering over a dying Vehicon, and Megatron loomed over them both.

Knock Out had been perfectly still for the duration of Chromedome’s search. Throughout most of the procedure, he’d had fleeting visions of what Chromedome was viewing one moment, and then absolutely no idea what the other mech was looking at the next. It was, without question, very reminiscent of déjà vu, as though he were recalling the memories himself, yet at the same time they were seemingly coming from nowhere. Now Knock Out stared at the virtual “picture” that hung before him on his internal feed. It was not a scene he recognized, despite the familiarity of the medbay and the Vehicons, he did not remember the words Megatron had spoken to him on that particular cycle. He had quickly come to realize there were plenty of holes in his memories, things he had forgotten over time, whether intentionally or not.

As Chromedome sifted through the data files some more, Knock Out felt as though a film reel was sliding back and forth through his processor, as though someone was rewinding and fast-forwarding through his memories. Suddenly Megatron was standing over him, practically screaming at him to repair the multitude of damaged Vehicons that were strewn all over the medbay of the Nemesis after who knows which battle they had engaged in with the Autobots. Knock Out was trying to explain that he was doing the best he could, that he was low on parts, that he couldn’t repair them all unless the stocks were replenished, that he had _told_ Megatron already, stellar-cycles ago, that they were short on supplies. Somewhere in the background, Breakdown was giving him a worried stare from across the medbay, the limp frame of a Vehicon clutched in his big gray hands as he waited for instructions on how to proceed. Then Megatron was moving, and Knock Out instinctively cringed and shied away from the massive silver servo that he was sure was about to strike him, except that it grabbed the Vehicon on the medslab instead, the large, pointy fingers reaching into the already open chassis and crushing the spark chamber of the Vehicon with one squeeze, effectively snuffing out its spark for good.

“Now you have your _parts_ , Medic,” Knock Out heard the voice in his audials as though Megatron were standing right there beside him in the small room. He did not realize it was Chromedome speaking the words aloud as he too relived the memory.

Then another memory flickered through Knock Out’s processor, a similar situation, almost identical. Once again, he was struggling to piece a dozen broken Vehicons back together at the same time, and Megatron was yet again glaring at him from the other side of the medslab, watching, waiting. Knock Out did not wait for the Decepticon warlord to raise his voice that time, he simply looked down to the injured Vehicon on the slab and deactivated it by clamping the Energon lines to the fuel pump and the removing the wires and cabling from the spark chamber. There were several other, very similar images that flashed through Knock Out’s mind briefly, though he was unable to determine whether they were of the same instance or not.

Now Megatron was standing before him in some other room of the Nemesis, on some other cycle. His Master was beyond livid, but for what reason, Knock Out did not know. All he was cognizant of was a flash of fear that was quickly followed by pain, and then suddenly the same scene began playing out over and over again in his mind as though his memories were stuck in an infinite loop. Sometimes the location changed, sometimes the pain wasn’t that bad, but always there was the fear of the mech standing over him and the realization of what was about to happen. Knock Out lost count of how many memories were shifting back and forth through his processor, but the speed with which everything seemed to be moving became suddenly overwhelming. The line between his recalls and reality started to blur around the edges, the only thing reeling him back into the here and now being the sudden feel of the hard surface of the countertop under the left side of his faceplates and the gentle touch of First Aid’s hand on his servo.

Chromedome was not surprised when he felt Knock Out’s frame starting to waver under his hand, so he had no trouble in following it down as the mech seemed to collapse onto the counter, Chromedome’s needles still securely fasted into the back to Knock Out’s skull. He gave a quick glance to First Aid, whose sense of concern had spiked dramatically. “It’s alright,” Chromedome raised his free hand to the Medic, “this happens sometimes. He’ll be fine.”

First Aid had been purposefully silent the entire time, though he had been projecting a signature of comfort and support towards to Knock Out as soon as Chromedome had stepped into the room. He hadn’t said a word when Chromedome asked Knock Out questions, or when the mech spoke of the recalls he was witnessing. First Aid knew better than to interrupt a medical professional during a procedure, but the look of horror in Knock Out’s optics as he slumped over and the flashes of pain emanating from his signature were too much, and he’d quickly put his hand on Knock Out’s servo and glanced up to the Mnemosurgeon. “Chromedome, maybe you should take a break, it’s been almost an hour.”

Blinking to First Aid’s words, Chromedome quickly focused in on his internal chronometer as he suddenly became aware of the time, which always seemed to get away from him any time he injected. Shaking his head, he carefully pulled his needles from Knock Out’s neck, retracting them back into his fingers as he looked to First Aid with an almost blank expression. “Yeah…yeah I probably should,” he shook his head again as he moved to the closed door. “You got any consumable Energon around here?”

“When you walk out the door, in the storage closet on your left, there’s a few bottles of medical grade in there, you’re welcome to it.”

“Thanks,” Chromedome said as he opened the door, gave a brief glance back to Knock Out, then disappeared into the room beyond.

“Are you okay?” First Aid asked as he tried to assist Knock Out as the mech pushed himself back up into a sitting position, and when he saw Knock Out’s gaze still staring straight ahead as though his optics were locked on some invisible scene playing out before him, First Aid quickly tugged at his servo while reaching up with his other hand to force the ex-‘Con to look at him. “Knock Out, _are you okay?”_

Knock Out blinked his optic shutters once as the worried look on First Aid’s features finally came into focus, then he slowly pulled his arm free of the other bot’s grip to squeeze his fingers against his helm as he winced with his reply. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Do you want me to grab you some Energon?”

“No, thank you,” Knock Out said as he set his hand back onto the counter, turned to glance to the open door, then blinked back to First Aid. “How long did you say it’s been?”

“An hour. You both look like you needed a break,” First Aid replied as he watched Knock Out for any signs of ill effects. “You know you can stop here if you want to.”

Shaking his head, Knock Out set his head in his hand as he leaned on the counter once more. “It’s okay. You were right, it’s worth it,” he said as he eyed First Aid, “It will be worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Chromedome visits Hangar E and Knock Out agrees to Mnemosurgery. Through this process, Chromedome is able to retrieve relevant data from Knock Out's memories that will assist him in his upcoming trial. First Aid provides moral support.


	34. A Witness - Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING* There's still minor use of needles in this chapter. It’s not anything horrific, and I didn’t get super detailed with it, but I just thought I’d mention it here, because I understand some people can’t handle anything regarding needles, and I respect that. If you are one of those people, you’d best skip this chapter and scroll down to the author’s notes at the end, where I’ve created a chapter summary.**

After retrieving a bottle of Energon from the shelves, Chromedome had pulled a stool up to the sorting table on the far side of the medbay that was scattered with Energon crystals and claimed a seat there. In between sips from the bottle, he shuttered his optics behind his yellow visor and pressed his fingers against his temples in an effort to stave off the headache that always seemed to follow after he performed an injection, particularly on live bots. Mnemosurgery was in fact riskier to the surgeon than it was to the patient. It was frighteningly easy to get lost in another bot’s databanks, to inadvertently absorb their memories into one’s own systems and suffer the same mental traumas they might have experienced as though the surgeon had gone through it all themselves. The deeper the reading of memories, the higher the risk to the surgeon’s own brain node.

Chromedome thought he’d been doing a good job in not allowing himself to go too deep this time around. He had not found anything that he did not already assume he might stumble across while skimming the memories of Megatron’s former CMO. One might question why he had offered his services to the ex-‘Con at all, and to that he would give the same answer that he had given Knock Out: Because every bot should be afforded a fair trial, Decepticon or not. But the truth was that injecting was habit-forming, for the surgeon, not the patient. It was an addiction that was as dangerous as any drug. Over the years, Chromedome had sworn off of it many times, but he always found another excuse for just one more injection, just _one more_ patient in need of his assistance, just _one more_ corpse that needed its brain node to be read and the crime would be solved. He knew it would be the death of him some day, it was just a matter of time, really. Most Mnemosurgeons died young.

“Chromedome?”

Ratchet’s vocalizer pulled Chromedome up out of his introspection, and he lifted his head to see the Medic step into the medbay. Chromedome smiled and offered his left hand as the older mech neared the table. “Ratchet. How many mega-cycles has it been, five-hundred? Six?”

“Seven, if my memory chips are still in working order,” Ratchet replied with a smile of his own as he shook Chromedome’s hand.

“I was beginning to think I’d seen the last of you all those vorns ago. You proved me wrong, old mech.”

“Hmm, us old folk are full of surprises,” Ratchet said, and he eyed the open door to the back room of the medbay before glancing elsewhere. He was aware that Chromedome had offered his services to Knock Out, and was, albeit secretly, thankful that the mech had agreed to go along with it. But whatever Chromedome and Knock Out were digging up from Knock Out’s memory banks was none of his business until the data was presented to him as a sitting member of the Council, so Ratchet did not ask any questions in that regard. “No Rewind travelling with you?” he asked, once his optics had scanned the room. “I haven’t seen him in just as long.”

“I _told_ him he was welcome to come along,” Chromedome huffed at the mention of Rewind, his long-time Conjux Endura who was vehemently against his injecting, no matter Chromedome’s justifications for it, “at least so he could see Earth while I was busy, but he refused.” Chromedome rolled his optics behind his visor as he took another swig from the bottle of Energon. “You remember how he gets about my line of work.”

“Only because he worries for your health, I’m certain,” Ratchet said as he then narrowed his gaze. “Speaking of, are you alright? You’re looking a bit off-color.”

“I’m fine, really,” Chromedome waved him away with his hand, “we’re just taking a break.” And then he scowled as he watched Ratchet pop open the screen on his left servo and run a beam of blue light up and down his frame as he sat there. “That’s _really_ not necessary.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ratchet mumbled as he eyed the readouts now populating his servo screen. “How often have you been injecting? When was the last time you scanned your data drives for malware?”

“Are you _really_ going to run me through diagnostic questions while I’m with a patient? Honestly, Ratchet, I thought you’d know better.”

“Chromedome,” Ratchet sighed as he turned his optics back up to the bot, “I realize you want to give Knock Out every opportunity to defend himself, but if you can’t perform the function without sacrificing your own health—”

_“_ Primus, you’re as bad as Rewind,” Chromedome muttered before he set the bottle of Energon down, closed his facemask, and stood from his seat. _“Every_ injection is a risk to my health, that’s how it works, you know that. Don’t worry about it, Ratch,” he began to back-step towards the smaller room, “I appreciate your concern, but I got this,” then he turned and moved back into the office space, quickly shutting the door behind him before he looked to First Aid. “Your boss thinks he knows everything.”

“He kinda does, though?” First Aid offered up with a shrug.

“Ugh,” Chromedome dug his palms against his visor for a moment and gave his head a final shake before he looked back to Knock Out. “Alright, are you still good? Do you want me to continue? I think I’m nearly through, just a few more dates on the list you gave me and we’re done.”

Knock Out touched a pointed finger on the data pad to bring the screen back to life, and he eyed the list there. Knowing what was left, he did not immediately answer Chromedome, his mind still not made up, even down to the nano-klick he finally pushed the data pad aside and turned his back to the Mnemosurgeon. “Yes. Let’s finish this,” he finally stated, and before he could second-guess himself, he heard the sound of the needles triggering behind him and felt the pinch of them sliding back into the tiny pin-pricks at the base of his helm.

Chromedome had never witnessed the joining of two bots in Conjux Ritus other than between Rewind and himself, that he could remember. It was an intensely private and personal moment shared between the two participants and no one else, it was not an experience that bots shared with one another. Many thought of the Conjux Ritus as sacred. For all of those reasons, Chromedome did not linger long on Knock Out’s memory of that cycle once he came to it. This memory, unlike many of the others Chromedome had already encountered, was crystal clear. There were no holes in the timeline, no missing pieces, it had been uniquely preserved in Knock Out’s databanks. Chromedome stayed long enough to recognized the significance of the moment before he shifted it aside and moved on to the next date from the list, but it was only then that he realized why Knock Out would want “proof” that he had bonded so completely with another bot.

Knock Out’s memory of the pain when that bond broke was almost as fresh as though it had happened yesterday. Chromedome felt it in his own spark the second he tapped into the memory file, as though his own Conjux was dying and being ripped from him forever. It was, oddly, an almost familiar feeling, as though he had experienced it before, yet that did nothing to dull the fire burning under his chest plates. And there was another feeling, no, it was a _presence_ , as though someone else was also watching or taking part in the memory. Chromedome could not put his finger on it, for the agony of his spark hammering inside its chamber was too much of a distraction, but someone was definitely there, or had at least had been there before him.

It was in this memory that Chromedome felt himself start to slip away, so caught up in the misery of losing one’s Conjux Endura that it threatened to swallow him up and make him a part of that pain forever. Suddenly it was not Breakdown’s presence he felt leaving him, but Rewind’s, and as he felt Rewind’s bonded spark separating from his own, it was as though all hope was lost, as though his own life was now meaningless, and that there was absolutely no point in carrying on without him.

First Aid had again been watching in silence, still sitting to the right of Knock Out when Chromedome resumed the injection. He had been silently fine-tuning his EM field to both feel for and react to whatever emotions were passing back and forth between the other two mechs. After that first round, he was not expecting the happiness and honest-to-Primus _love_ that burst forth from Knock Out’s signature for a few nano-clicks. It had been so wonderful and pure that it made the hurt and sadness that followed that much harder to witness. First Aid was instantly aware of the shift in Knock Out’s signature, of how the pain just grew and grew and grew inside his field, and First Aid could again not help but place his left hand onto Knock Out’s arm in a gesture of sympathy. He was not expecting Knock Out to then pull his servo back so that he could intertwine his fingers with First Aid’s and cling to his hand as though his life depended on it.

That’s when First Aid felt the sadness _move._ He swore that through his EM field he felt the emotion spread from Knock Out’s signature to Chromedome’s, and then suddenly it was drawing the two of them in like a black hole and swallowing up the rest of their feelings and presence of mind, as though their signatures were literally drowning their sparks through their shared grief and sorrow.

“Knock Out,” First Aid said as he leaned forward to peer up at his face, and it was only then that he spotted the wet line of optic cleanser running from the inner corner of Knock Out’s right optic and down his faceplates despite the blank, almost lifeless stare he was giving the shelving on the wall before him. “Knock Out!” First Aid said again, raising his voice and clutching his hand even tighter when the mech still gave no response. “Chromedome! Hey!” he turned to the Mnemosurgeon then, yelling when he noticed the mech was giving the same blank stare. “Stop! You have to _stop_ now!” He didn’t want to touch the mech, he was afraid of what might happen if he startled him, and how that would affect the needles that were currently shoved into Knock Out’s cranial stem. He finally resorted to leaving Knock Out’s side to turn and face Chromedome and project his own EM field directly at the bot with all his might, a signature filled with the same instructions as his yelling vocalizer. “CHROMEDOME, STOP!”

Somewhere in the back of his consciousness, Chromedome heard the yelling and felt the shove against his signature. It was Rewind’s voice that he heard, though the moment his sensors recalibrated themselves to focus on the figure looking up at him, he knew it was not his actual Conjux commanding him to stop.

Suddenly standing up a bit straighter, Chromedome quickly retracted the needles from Knock Out’s neck and took a step back. He blinked to First Aid for a moment before slowly turning his head away and focusing his gaze elsewhere, trying to collect himself. He then held up his left hand, and watched as he flexed his fingers, and he reminded himself that _this_ was reality, that he was standing in _this_ room and in _this_ body that he had control over, and that _this_ was where he belonged.

“I think this is enough,” First Aid said, now ashamed that he’d had to raise his voice and resort to manipulating mechs with his field, but at the same time still intensely worried as he looked back and forth between the two bots. “This _has_ to be enough, it’s not safe anymore!”

“No,” Knock Out said as he quickly drew the back of his hand across his faceplates to remove the streak of optic cleanser, then he turned to glare to First Aid and Chromedome. ”There’s one more piece. You need to see it. You need to see it so that you understand it, so _they’ll_ understand it.”

Chromedome blinked to the red optics glaring at him as he finally felt grounded once more. It took him all of three nano-clicks to go from agreeing with First Aid’s sound advice to changing his mind as his addictive tendency instantly won him over, and he quickly released the needles from his fingertips one more time. “Alright, let’s go.”

“ _No!_ ” First Aid placed one hand against Chromedome and the other against Knock Out to physically push them away from each other as he glared back and forth at them both. “At this rate you might _kill_ yourselves! I’m not even sure what the frag is going _on_ anymore! Primus, what if I hadn’t been here to break you apart!?”

Knock Out eyed Chromedome for a moment before he turned to grab First Aid’s hand and tug the mech in close to his side as he turned his back to the Mnemosurgeon once more, though whether he had grabbed onto First Aid for comfort or in an effort to keep the mech from intervening, he would never say. “Do it.”

With the final date on Knock Out’s list in mind, Chromedome reentered the ex-‘Con’s neural pathways to seek it out amidst his memory files, though he did not come across it easily. The memory of that cycle and many cycles thereafter were buried behind a mesh of self-imposed firewalls and barriers. He left those parts alone, and searched for matching data on the other side. There he found absolute rage for a human named Silas, but it was intertwined with a hatred just as deep for a spidery Decepticon named Airachnid, which was only exacerbated further by the fact that Megatron would not allow Knock Out to torture _her,_ so the human had been given to Knock Out to play with instead. Thanks to Rewind and his gigantic database of human movies, Chromedome had seen several of the genre referred to as “horror”, and that was what came to mind when he finally _did_ find those little packets of data still sitting unprocessed in Knock Out’s memory, it was like watching a horror movie. Chromedome did not need to linger on those memories long to register the feelings of revenge that _had_ been processed.

As Chromedome skirted through Knock Out’s memories a final time, he came across a few more similar scenes, and the Mnemosurgeon found that the memories of that type were all grouped into one, buried deep within Knock Out’s neocortex. Not even Knock Out himself would remember them fully, but the clearest memory was the most recent, of Knock Out attaching the cord of the Cortical Psychic Patch from the back of Megatron’s head and straight into Smokescreen’s while the young Autobot begged him not to. That action, still torturous however simple it was, paled in comparison to the other pieces of memories that Chromdome found clustered together alongside it. There were a handful of instances, Chromedome did not count more than three, of Knock Out torturing Autobots, none of which Chromedome recognized. The circular saw and drill were usually involved and limbs were often removed, in small portions, one piece at a time, whenever the Autobot refused to answer Knock Out’s questions. Once, Chromedome witnessed Knock Out slowly twisting one of his sharp fingers into a mech’s optic as he tried to force him to give up the location of a supposed Autobot inter-stellar convoy route, though the bot never caved. None of the bots Knock Out tortured ever caved to his demands, despite the pain he inflicted upon them, and Chromedome was surprised to find a sense of failure there, although when he dug further, he quickly found that behind the failure was the fear of Megatron for those failed attempts at gathering information. It was all cyclical, the highly-misguided actions and the failure, whether perceived or real, followed by the very legitimate fear of Megatron’s wrath; it just went around and around and around again, and overshadowing it all was that deep-seated grief that began to pull Chromedome away the second he found it again. This time he was smart enough to step back however, and quickly remove the five needles from the base of Knock Out’s helm to retract them back into his fingers.

First Aid was not a fighter, and the second he found his arm pinned to the countertop under Knock Out’s grip, and he saw Chromdome’s needles aiming for the back of Knock Out’s neck again, he did not try to stop them, despite the fact he was silently cursing them both. He sent a little flicker of anger and annoyance through his EM field, but that was quickly drowned out by the onslaught of emotions rippling from Knock Out’s signature. First Aid did not know what Chromedome saw in the memories that made up the final date on Knock Out’s list, but it was clearly nothing good. He was about to attempt to rip his arm free from Knock Out’s grasp, but then Chromedome stepped away, the procedure complete.

“I’ll need a few klicks to tally the results,” Chromedome said as he moved to the counter and picked up the data pad there. He gave a nod to Knock Out before he left the room, this time shutting the door behind him.

Knock Out finally released First Aid’s arm so that he could lean his own on the counter and cover his face with his hand as he shuttered his optics. Not a word was spoken between the two mechs for several klicks, though eventually First Aid offered his usual comforting signature as he tried to pick up on whatever Knock Out was feeling.

“What do you think?” First Aid finally asked, when he was aware of how closely Knock Out was guarding his EM field.

Knock Out was slow to respond, the memory of attaching the Cortical Psychic Patch to Smokescreen still fresh in his mind. _He_ had been the one responsible for allowing Megatron wander through the young Autobot’s mind on a search for more information on the Omega Keys, and Knock Out could now not help but equate that to what he had seen and felt Bumblebee experience when the Decepticon warlord had taken over his mind completely. It _had_ to have felt similar, if not exactly the same for Smokescreen, and the sudden realization and guilt for his part in it all hit Knock Out hard. He opened his optics to stare at the counter below him, looking as confused and surprised as his vocalizer sounded. “I think I’m a bad mech.”

First Aid offered a faint smile to that. “You’re not a bad mech, you’ve just done bad things.”

Knock Out continued to stare at the counter briefly before he eyed First Aid. He had never felt more alienated and different from the other bot as he did in that moment. They were so unalike in almost every way possible, and Knock Out could not understand how First Aid was able to be so continually positive, or how he was able to flip a bad situation around and see the good in all of it. Somehow the Energon cube was always half full for First Aid, and Knock Out envied him for that, because to _him,_ the Energon cube was half empty, and there was a crack in the side, and it was leaking a little more fuel every cycle.

Knock Out became aware that he’d been staring at First Aid for an uncomfortably long amount of time, and he blinked then as a question suddenly surfaced from his memory banks, one that he’d been pondering for deca-cycles now but never found the right time to ask. And maybe this wasn’t the right time to ask either, perhaps it was even inappropriate, but all of the bad memories that had been recalled in the past two hours were prompting Knock Out to try and focus on Breakdown, the _good_ times with Breakdown and not on the way he had been killed or what had been done to his frame afterward, and that was what brought the recent memory to mind.

“When we were back on the Nemesis, and we found Ratchet powered down in that chair in my office, you mentioned Breakdown almost immediately,” Knock Out said, and he ignored the way First Aid squirmed at the mention of _that chair,_ “How did you _know?”_

After his initial apprehension, First Aid eventually raised one side of his visor in a questioning look back to Knock Out. “You gave me the passcode to the Starhopper. After living on Earth for almost three mega-cycles and learning some of the human languages, I was finally able to read all those music files you have stored in there,” he said with a shrug, “I was going through all the songs in that one folder called ‘Breakdown’s Mix’, and I uhh…” he paused for a moment, the Transformer equivalent of a blush suddenly emanating from his signature as he struggled to carry on, _“*Ahem!*_ somewhere between ‘Sexual Healing’, ‘Lovers and Friends’, and ‘No One Like You’, it finally clicked.”

Knock Out stared at First Aid for two more nano-klicks before he smirked, looking away as he chuckled quietly, though in that same moment the door swung open and Chromedome stepped back into the room, and he instantly turned his attention to the mech.

Chromedome paused in the doorway as he looked to the Autobot Medic, the data pad held in his hand. “I’m sorry, First Aid, but can I get a few klicks alone with him?” he asked as he nodded toward Knock Out.

“Of course,” said First Aid as he moved from the counter and to the exit, and he made sure to shut the door behind him as he left.

Chromedome nodded, waiting until First Aid had left the room before he offered Knock Out the data pad. “Here are the counts I collected from your memories. I hope that some of what I was able to recall for you today will help you in front of the Council. I think that it will, but it’s up to you to determine what you want to do with it. Use it to your advantage, craft your defense, use it to help build your plea, whatever you decide. I’ll be standing up there with you on the cycle of your trial regardless of what sort of plea you enter, in case the Council needs me to verify anything you say.”

Knock Out eyed the data pad as he took it from Chromedome’s hand. He was desperate to review the statistics the bot had managed to pull from his hard drives, but the Mnemosurgeon was giving him a look that suggested he had more to say, so Knock Out reluctantly set the data pad aside to give the mech his full attention.

“It seems like you’ve put a lot of effort into trying to forget certain memories that were created while you were working for Megatron,” Chromedome said as he held Knock Out’s gaze, “and I can’t say that I blame you. That being said, that thing that you’re doing, with your data collection stream — Yes, I can tell,” Chromedome paused when Knock Out suddenly gave him a look like he was just caught red-handed. “You’ve got memories that are separated into two different file catalogues. Factual data over here on the posterior side of your processor,” Chromedome tapped his finger against one side of his own helm, then the other, “emotional response sequences over here on the anterior side. At what point were you planning on running the emotional sequences through your processor? You’ve got several thousand files pending.”

Knock Out found he could no longer hold Chromedome’s gaze, and so he eyed the floor instead. It had never occurred to him that the Mnemosurgeon would realize that some of his memories had been broken down into pieces, though in hindsight it seemed so obvious now that he certainly would.

Megatron had been the one to point it out to Knock Out first, that he was too sensitive, too temperamental, that _true_ Decepticons knew how to keep their emotions in check and he was not doing a very good job of that. It had started with a verbal warning from the warlord, but then quickly dissolved to threats of violence and then actual violence when it appeared that the CMO was unable to “control himself.” But whether his emotional response equated to him being too sarcastic when replying to Megatron’s questions, or because he laughed too loudly at Starscream’s usual foolishness, or because he’d shown sadness when two of Soundwave’s simbiote Cassettecons, Rumble and Frenzy, had been killed in a battle with the Autobots, Megatron did not care, none of it was allowed. Knock Out had tried to reign himself in, even believing, to a certain extent, that his Master was correct, but for all his efforts, he could never seem to escape Megatron’s constant disapproval of his “behavior.” Knock Out’s sense of failure had eventually led him to look for answers in the most logical place, and when he had rejected Shockwave’s original suggestion, that he remove the emotional centers of his brain node completely, Shockwave had taught him how to manipulate his data collection systems instead, so that by separating everything before it hit his processor, he could keep his true emotional responses at bay. Yet even that had always proved difficult, a prime example of him failing to handle his emotions in what Megatron would have deemed an “appropriate” way being the cycle he had attempted to go after Breakdown to rescue him, when he and Megatron had fought on the deck of the Starhopper and then out into the shuttle bay. And right before that final blow to Knock Out’s faceplates that had left him offline for cycles, Megatron had whispered into his audial a reminder of that constant failure: _”If you had as much passion for the Decepticon cause as you do for your **partner** , you would have made an excellent Warrior, Knock Out. You might have even made me proud.”_

Knock Out tried to think up a valid excuse to give Chromedome, but he could not come up with much. ”I uhh…I haven’t really had the time.”

“Well _make_ the time,” said Chromedome as he shook his head. “If you don’t do it soon, you’re going to run out of memory space, and that data-dump through your processor could cause it to malfunction. You could seriously fry your circuits that way. You _know_ that, right?” he paused, shaking his head again when Knock Out merely shrugged and glanced elsewhere. “Look, I’m not a mental health expert,” Chromedome started once more, “but I have a very specific understanding of how the physical brain node works. I know what it needs to function properly, I know what healthy trionic waves in a cerebro-stream are supposed to look like. Yours aren’t healthy. You need to clear out your files and run everything through your processor before your programming starts creating its own pathways to process them, and that could happen in any number of ways: false recalls, anxiety, visual or auditory hallucinations, amnesia, psychosis, depression,” Chromedome shrugged. “I’ve seen it happen to other bots many, _many_ times. Autobots, Decepticons, Neutrals, it doesn’t matter which side you were on, our brain modules are all the same. So, do yourself a favor and _make_ _the time.”_

Knock Out had been silently listening to all that Chromedome said, though he did not make eye-contact with the mech as he said it. He was honestly slightly annoyed that the bot was lecturing him on how he ought to handle his memories, and he did not care that the Mnemosurgeon was an expert on that subject matter. Typical Autobot, trying to force him to _feel_ things. Still, Knock Out finally gave him a nod to at least acknowledge he’d heard the other bot’s words.

Chromedome vented a sigh at the sense of annoyance he was picking up from Knock Out’s signature. He was used to bots never taking him seriously, but that did not mean he would ever stop trying to help them. “You can take my advice or not, it’s your choice,” Chromedome said as he held up a hand defensively, “And I’m not going to tell Ratchet or First Aid what you’re doing, because this session was done in confidence, in preparation for your trial, and because the doctor-patient confidentiality clause exists here, but I highly, _highly_ recommend you inform them of your…difficulties, in case you lose complete control of yourself, because you will, at some point, if you don’t start moving those files from one side of your processor to the other _soon,_ you will,” Chromedome finally looked down to his peds when it became obvious to him that Knock Out’s anger was beginning to rise, but he had one last thing he felt he needed to say after the experiences they had just shared, and he tried a final time to catch Knock Out’s gaze as he spoke. “Lastly, I uhh…I just wanted to give you my condolences regarding Breakdown. It hurts you, I could feel how much it hurts you. I have a Conjux of my own and…well, I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose him, to _really_ lose him.”

Chromedome’s words did finally bring Knock Out’s gaze back around to him, and he blinked at the Autobot’s sincerity. He was still not used to hearing sympathetic words from others concerning Breakdown’s deactivation. Of the Deceptions, aside from the nano-klick of emotion he had felt from Megatron’s signature the cycle Breakdown had died, only Dreadwing had offered a few quiet words of sympathy, when no one else was around to hear them but him and Knock Out. Soundwave had never acknowledged the other mech was gone at all, and while Starscream had certainly commented on it, he had never offered _sympathy_ over it. Once, during one of the many nights Knock Out had drowned his sorrows in ten cans of Engex and was wandering the hallways of the Nemesis, a Vehicon had offered him condolences and expressed concern for the CMO. But instead of being thankful that the mech recognized his grief, Knock Out had yelled at the Vehicon, cornered him against the wall, beaten him down and then threatened to cut out his vocalizer with his buzz saw if he ever heard the mech speak Breakdown’s designation again.

“Thank you,” Knock Out said softly, though he quickly looked away once more as he was starting to feel like he might not be so deserving of any bot’s sympathy, for anything.

Chromedome nodded and then turned to leave. “I’ll let First Aid know you’re welcome to contact me via external message if you have any questions about your results, otherwise I’ll see you at the trial.”

 

Rewind paced back and forth across the Navigations room of the Nemesis, his white fists clenched in agitation as he stalked past the dormant Spacebridge for the thirteenth time that evening.

The Vehicon manning the portal had long-since given up trying to convince the small mech to wait elsewhere, and had been ignoring him for the past two-and-a-half hours, speaking only when he was pestered by Rewind for an energy signature update, to which his response was always the same: “Nothing yet, Sir.” And when the vortex of the Spacebridge finally ignited in a swirl of blue and azure-colored light, Rewind crossed his arms, his optical visor narrowed as he stood before the circular portal to watch Chromedome materialize there.

“You’re late,” Rewind said as Chromedome stepped from the light, doing nothing to hide the irritation from his EM field as the taller mech came near.

“Things ran a little longer than expected,” said Chromedome as he shrugged apologetically, then offered a nod of thanks to Caps Lock at the helm of the Spacebridge controls.

Internal comms lacked the range to reach between two bots from Cybertron to Earth, but that was no excuse to Rewind. “You could have sent me a message through the comm station,” Rewind muttered before he turned and started towards the exit, and Chromedome followed after him, “they would have passed it on to me.”

Chromedome knew his Conjux would be in a foul mood when he returned, and he knew that nothing he could say or do would change the other mech’s attitude. This fight was centuries old, and Chromedome always lost. He was used to it by now, though. “Sorry,” he said as he shrugged again, now walking alongside Rewind as they rounded a corner to head down one of the hallways. “How have things been going here?”

“Red Alert was able to patch into the Decepticon historical archives today,” Rewind said, and on the righthand side of his inner visor display he was still sorting through the millions of images and data he had come across, “it’s...pretty messed up stuff. Then again, knowing where _you_ just came from, I’m sure you saw much of the same,” he turned his glaring blue visor back up to Chromedome beside him.

“Hmm,” was all Chromedome said to that, his gait purposefully slow so that Rewind could keep up with him, though he was forced to stop short when the smaller mech rushed to stand in front of him and point with an accusatory finger. _Heeeere we go._

“You _promised_ me you were going to stop injecting! You _remember_ that conversation, don’t you?”

Chromedome was quick to raise a hand as he replied. “Hey, First Aid approached _me, not_ the other way around.”

“But you still agreed to it.”

“I felt the situation dictated a necessity for it.”

Rewind crossed his white servos again, his visor still narrowed. “Oh, so _this_ is how it’s gonna be, then? You’re gonna inject every ‘Con that stands trial to ‘help them out’? Since when are you the enemy’s public defender?”

Chromedome vented a sigh as he put one hand to his aching helm and briefly shuttered his optics behind his own visor. “No, that’s _not_ how it’s gonna be. I’m _not_ doing this for every ‘Con.”

“Why _this_ one, then?”

“I have my reasons.”

_“Do_ you?” Rewind said as he set his fists on his hips. “Well, you know what _I_ think? _I_ think you’re doing it on account of who’s sitting on that Council.”

“Oh _Primus,”_ Chromedome grumbled as he brought his other hand to his helm before he threw them both into the air. _“Here_ we go again! Of _course!_ It always comes back to _him_ with you, doesn’t it?” Chromedome let his hands drop back to his sides as he now returned Rewind’s glare. “When are you gonna let this go, Rewind? It’s been _four million years!”_

Rewind didn’t back down an inch from the taller mech, even when he raised his voice. “Well if _not_ for the fact _he’s_ on the Council, what _are_ your reasons for doing it then? Go on, tell me.”

Rolling his optics, which he knew Rewind could sense despite both their visors, Chromedome stepped to the side and past his Conjux to carry on down the corridor as he waved him off with a hand. Forget this nonsense, he couldn’t be bothered to try and defend himself on _two_ fronts. “I’m going back to the habsuite, I’ve got a headache.”

“Yeah, because you’ve been looking through a Decepticon sociopath’s _mind_ all cycle!” Rewind yelled after him.

Chromedome stopped dead in his tracks to that, closing his optics for a few moments before he turned and walked back to where Rewind remained standing. He carefully set a hand down onto one of the smaller mech’s black shoulder plates, ignoring the anger-filled signature being projected his way as he stared down at him with a sudden look of guilt. “I love you, Rewind. I really don’t say that enough. I’m sorry.” And with that, he moved away again and turned to head back to their shared quarters.

 

It was not until several hours later, in the middle of the night while Chromedome lay on the recharge slab, the “memory” of losing his Conjux Endura already invading his dreams, that he was finally able to recognize the presence that he had felt earlier as he sorted through Knock Out’s data files. The revelation was so startling and the presence so suddenly clear that it jolted Chromedome straight out of power-down mode, and he quickly sat up beside the still-slumbering Rewind to stare blankly into the darkness of their room as he tried to rationalize how the presence existed in the first place, or what it could possibly mean.

_”Bumblebee?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Ratchet encounters Chromedome during the break and they discuss Chromedome's Conjux Endura, Rewind, who disapproves of Chromedome's injecting. Chromdome continues to search Knock Out's memory files for the information he requested and learns of Knock Out's Conjux Endura bond with Breakdown as well as the torture Knock Out performed on Smokescreen, two other Autobots, and Silas. Chromedome realizes that Knock Out has been artificially manipulating his data intake to keep certain parts of memories from being processed, which he warns Knock Out against doing.  
> Later on Cybertron, Chromedome and Rewind argue about Chromedome's injecting, and Chromedome realizes that Bumblebee was somehow present in the room with Knock Out the cycle that Breakdown deactivated.


	35. A Bargain

Knock Out spent the next few cycles reviewing the numbers and data Chromedome had given him, along with Cybertronian law in the context of military tribunals, and the physical inventory counts Arcee had sent to him via First Aid’s external message inbox. This entire process for Knock Out had been bizarre and revealing in an almost embarrassing sort of way, as he forced himself to sit down with his alleged criminal acts on one side and his “good deeds” on the other. Yet despite all that he had offered to the Autobots, and having saved Bumblebee and First Aid, Knock Out knew the scales were still not tipped in his favor. In particular, he found himself continually going back to the memory of what he had done to Smokescreen. He honestly agonized over it, and even considered apologizing, but what good would that do now? The young Autobot’s mind was probably fragged forever because of him. Suddenly being trapped in that wall by the mech seemed like a rather fitting punishment.

First Aid had offered to help Knock Out sort through the data in any way he could, though he had declined. Knock Out was taking his time on coming to a decision about what he was going to do with Chromedome’s findings, and while he appreciated First Aid’s constant support, he knew this was something that he needed to figure out for himself.

Ratchet and Bumblebee mostly left him alone, the both of them knowing what he was doing and not wanting to overstep their boundaries, although Knock Out had picked up on a certain tenseness in Bumblebee’s signature whenever the mech was within range that had not been there before. It was a general sense of unease that hung around the Autobot Earth Commander like a cloud, and it seemed to match his recent look of weariness and discomfort. Knock Out knew it was serious when First Aid began frequently flaring his comforting signature every time Bumblebee was present.

Thankfully, Miko had not been seen in a stellar-cycle as she had returned to Japan, and Ratchet _insisted_ that they simply could _not_ spare the Energon to power the Groundbridge for her to travel back and forth between Unit E and her hometown every cycle, or even once a week. No one believed him, and Bumblebee had to all but order Ratchet to allow Miko back at least once a month, to which the Medic eventually, begrudgingly agreed. Jack, too, was now frequently missing from the hangar, his college course load taking up the majority of his time, though he did swing by the base on the weekends in his very used, aqua-blue, late-model Chevy Cavalier, which the Vehicons found both horrific and mesmerizing. Even Ratchet had felt the need to comment on the old, weathered vehicle, suggesting that Jack ought to let it retire in peace, and the peeling paint and rust-covered finish made Knock Out cringe as he struggled to ignore his programming that was telling him to run and grab a buffer so he could at least make the poor thing _look_ better.

Rafael, on the other hand, seemed to stop by almost every cycle, which Knock Out could tell thrilled Ratchet, despite the old Medic’s claim that he was not particularly fond of humans. Rafael had long-since lost his initial fear of Knock Out, though that was largely due to the fact that Ratchet almost always accompanied him when he visited. Nowadays, Rafael greeted the ex-‘Con like he did the Autobots; Knock Out would return the child’s greeting with a small nod of acknowledgement, and although that was the only physical attention he gave it, Knock Out often strained his audials to listen in on the lengthy conversations between Rafael and Ratchet, and it stunned him to learn how intelligent the child was. Apparently, it had been making repairs and modifications to the Autobot’s computer systems and Spacebridge since meeting them, _and_ it could read and write in the Cybertronian language, and decipher words when Ratchet spoke their native tongue aloud. The only think keeping Rafael from speaking Cybertronian himself was a lack of a mechanical voicebox. Additionally, the child was some sort of prodigy by Earthen standards, and it constantly complained about how dull its studies were, how it couldn’t wait to leave “high school” and move on to a more challenging education, how Cybertron’s alien history and culture was so much more fascinating than that of Earth. No wonder Ratchet had such a fondness for it. _Him,_ Knock Out had to remind himself, _him,_ not _it._

But regardless of all the research, while Knock Out was slowly coming around to the idea that some of the things he had done were in fact wrong, he still refused to believe that torturing Silas was one of them. Knock Out had kept many pieces of the memories that had been created during those stellar-cycles blocked off and sealed away somewhere else in his mind, and he refused to review them now. He could not fathom a scenario where the human deserved anything less than torture, and if Silas was wrong for his actions, and Knock Out was wrong for his, then they could both be wrong together, that was fine. If he was going to spend time behind bars, Knock Out would be more than happy to serve them for that reason. As backwards as it was, he felt he was sticking to his morals, and he believed Breakdown would have been proud of him for it.

Nevertheless, he did not want to spend the next _entire millennia_ in a cell, so he knew he had to try and work the judicial system as best as he could to keep that from happening. He surprised himself by even going so far as to contemplate whether he should offer any one of the sitting Councilmembers his ”services” to decrease his sentence. He had not used that tactic in a long, long time, not since before he met Breakdown, having resorted to it only when he was desperate and there appeared to be no other way to get what he wanted in any given situation, though he could not now imagine himself in a more desperate situation than his current one. He had to remind himself that _that_ line of thinking was generally perceived as unsavory and irregular, unless your designation was Pharma, and that it probably would not go over so well with the likes of most of the mechs on the Council. _Most of them_. It was with that same sort of desperation that Knock Out realized there was one more thing he had to offer, though he knew this too would not go over well. It would take some convincing, maybe a _lot_ of convincing. It would mean he would have to go back on his word, in some respects, and surely there would be an initial refusal, but he had to try, to keep himself from thousands of years behind bars, he had to at least try.

After five cycles of analysis and introspection, Knock Out finally approached Ratchet one morning, once the others were off on their routine mining expedition. He found that he was extremely nervous, and that irritated him. He used to be able to act so calm and cool around anyone when he needed to charm his way out of something, even Megatron on occasion, but now he was an anxious, bumbling mess; he was losing his edge. He stalled for an hour, busying himself with pretending to sort through the Energon crystals spread out across the table in the medbay before finally speaking up.

“I need to have a word with you regarding my tribunal,” Knock Out said, eyeing Ratchet warily, overanalyzing the old Medic’s look and EM field and response once the mech finally turned from his work station to blink at him.

“What is it?” Ratchet asked, though he frowned slightly. “You know I can’t offer you any legal advice, Knock Out.”

“I know that,” Knock Out quickly raised his hand, “I know that. I want to negotiate a deal, a plea bargain. I’m _allowed_ to submit a plea bargain, aren’t I?” he said as he raised a dark brow.

Ratchet too raised a brow. He had honestly not expected the mech to request as much. A plea bargain was a formal admission of guilt, and he had quite honestly believed that Knock Out was planning to fight the charges in their entirety to the bitter end. “Yes, of course,” he replied, “what are you proposing? You know it will need to be submitted in writing.”

“I have most of it drawn up already but…there’s one part that I think needs to be discussed first. With you. _Just_ with you, for now.”

Already not liking where this was going, Ratchet vented a small sigh as he set his work aside to give Knock Out his full attention. “Whatever it is, if you’re serious about it, I’ll need to run it by the entire Council eventually, just so we’re clear.”

“I understand.”

“Alright then. Go on.”

Knock Out quit picking at the Energon shards caught in the lining of the table as he watched Ratchet’s reaction carefully. “I’d like to have some of the charges reduced or dropped, in exchange for something.”

“Which charges, and in exchange for what?”

“The homicide charges, I want the number decreased to seven. That’s what Chromedome found, seven, not _fifteen,”_ he gave a small glare to that, as if to say “See? I didn’t kill _that_ many bots!” as though the remaining seven were justified. “And I want the degree of those charges decreased as well. Megatron was the one who suggested I kill the Vehicons for their parts, it wasn’t _my_ idea, and you know what he did to anyone who disobeyed his orders. Chromedome’s data can prove it was his suggestion, _and_ what he did if someone disobeyed him. So can the CMRD. I’m not saying what I did was right, I’m not saying that gave me the excuse, but I did it to save my own aft as much as the Vehicons that needed the parts. I didn’t do it because I _wanted_ to. And the corpse desecration charges,” Knock Out paused, eyeing the table once more, “according to Chromedome’s findings, the total count is two-thousand-eight-hundred-and-thirty-seven, not five thousand. So I want that count decreased to match his findings as well,” he paused again, his nerves prickling up under his armor plating once more. “And all of the other charges…I want them dropped, _all of them…_ in exchange for my T-cog.”

Ratchet had been silently listening, though at Knock Out’s last, he narrowed his optics. “You had me until the end. I could have sworn we just had a very lengthy conversation not too long ago about harvesting parts from bots’ frames.”

“That’s funny,” Knock Out raised his head to lock optics with Ratchet, “because I overheard Jack and Rafael the other evening talking about how _you_ once offered _your_ T-cog to someone, Ratchet,” and when the Medic’s brows shot up in surprise, Knock Out only glared. “Drop the rest of the charges and I’ll give my T-cog to Bumblebee.”

“Absolutely not,” Ratchet muttered, shaking his head as he turned back to the counter, and he said nothing regarding the offer he himself had made Bumblebee mega-cycles ago.

“Oh please, _”_ Knock Out gestured to the medbay door with his hand, “you’ve seen the way he mopes around here! He’s supposed to be a _Commander,_ he’s supposed to be _leading troops._ He’s _barely functioning_ without his T-cog. I have a perfectly good one that you won’t let me use anyway, so let me trade it in.”

Ratchet stared down at his hands as they rested on the countertop, the hands that were now freezing up on him several times a cycle. He slowly flexed his fingers before he pushed away from the counter to stand, and he began to pace back and forth across the room as he rubbed one hand over his mouth, the way he always did when his mind was forced to process something he did not enjoy thinking about, period.

The moment Ratchet stood and began his walk from one side of the room to the other and back, Knock Out regretted what he’d said. The rhythmic thump of Ratchet’s peds and the back-and-forth march of his gait instantly sparked a fear in Knock Out’s nanocortex and he quickly raised his hand as he backed away from the sorting table. “Okay! Okay, never mind. Forget I said anything, alright? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry, I’m sorry.”

“What?” Ratchet stopped in his tracks, his thoughts interrupted, and he dropped his hand as he blinked to Knock Out and the fear-laden signature drifting his way. “I’m not angry, I just—” and then he realized what he had been doing, innocently, in his mind, and not out of anger at all, though Knock Out had clearly perceived it that way. Immediately aware of the error he’d made, Ratchet raised both hands and stepped back over to the counter to reclaim his seat, and even attempted a half-hearted signature of calm, though it was so horrible that had First Aid been present, he would have laughed at the effort even while praising Ratchet for at least trying. “I’m not angry. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. I’m just thinking, that’s all, I pace when I think,” he eyed Knock Out a moment longer before he heaved a vented sigh and shook his head, then propped his elbow joints on the counter so he could press his hands to his face. Primus dammit, he shouldn’t even be considering this. He _was,_ of course, but he _really_ shouldn’t be. “Bumblebee will never go for this,” he said, that being the first excuse that came to mind.

Knock Out froze when Ratchet stopped, all the readings on his HUD indicating high alerts around Ratchet’s form, which he did not realize he’d initiated. Then he watched Ratchet move back to the counter and felt…something? _Some_ sort of EM field being sent his way, he was not sure what it was supposed to be, but true to Ratchet’s word, it was not anger. Still, he remained where he was, just to be on the safe side as he replied to Ratchet’s words. “Then don’t tell him.”

“I _have_ to tell him,” Ratchet dropped his hands to look to Knock Out once more, “he’s a sitting member of the Council. If you submit a plea bargain, I _have_ to tell _all_ of them.”

Fortunately, Knock Out had anticipated this response. It took him a moment to collect his thoughts and force himself to ignore the fear that had seemingly jumped up out of nowhere, but he finally remembered what he had worked out in his head before bringing the idea to Ratchet’s attention, and he slowly stepped back to the sorting table, though he kept it between himself and where Ratchet sat. “Only tell the truth to Ironhide. Get him to agree to it _first_ , and then you two tell the _rest_ of them that I’m submitting the plea bargain in exchange for the chemical weapons I showed you and Ironhide earlier,” he said, and then he narrowed his gaze ever-so-slightly, “or did you two already let that information slip?”

“No,” Ratchet said, and he could not help but return the small glare, “we did not. What happened to not being able to _trust_ bots with such _delicate_ information?”

“If you can’t trust everyone that’s sitting on that Council with chemical weapons, then why are they sitting on the Council to begin with?” Knock Out countered.

Ratchet held Knock Out’s glare for a nano-klick longer before he shook his head and looked back down to the counter, and he brought his hands together so that he could rub one with the other. “I don’t like this,” he muttered.

Now it was Knock Out’s turn to run his hand down his face as a sigh exited his air vents. “Look, I’m a _grounder._ I’m a _sports car_. It will be a _perfect_ fit. Convince the others and then just tell Bumblebee that one of the returning ships had a spare T-cog. He _needs_ this if you want him to be successful, _you know that,”_ he glared to Ratchet again. “Primus, you always said the whole thing was _my_ fault anyway. _Let me make it right._ ”

Ratchet was silent for a time, his mind turning the information over and over as he continued to rub his hands together before he finally grumbled in response. “This goes against my ethics as a Medic, my honor as an Autobot, and the very _alloy_ of my being.”

“ _Does_ it?” Knock Out snapped, “You’d rather he continues to _suffer_ without a T-cog than give up your _precious morals_ and Autobot integrity? Is this not how Autobots support their leader? Is this not how you all contribute to your ‘cause’?” Knock Out did not mention that this was how Decepticons supported _their_ leader, that you just gave and gave and gave everything you had until there was nothing left, and when you finally deactivated because of it, you would be remembered for all that you had given, if you were lucky.

Feeling like an absolute hypocrite and not wanting to admit it, Ratchet hung his head for a moment before he finally shook it, mostly at himself, then turned to glance back to Knock Out. “Put it in writing. I’ll see what Ironhide has to say. If he agrees, I’ll take it to the rest of the Council.”

Ratchet returned to Knock Out with his response two cycles later. It had honestly surprised Knock Out that both Ratchet and Ironhide were willing to go behind not only Bumblebee’s back, but the rest of the Council members’ as well. Autobots, it seemed, were not as pure and honest as Knock Out had once presumed. He was not certain that was a good thing, but he intended to use it to his full advantage.

But there was a catch. Primus, why was there _always_ a catch?

“We, the Council, have a counteroffer,” Ratchet said as he handed a data pad over to Knock Out, who quickly reviewed the screen.

“Seven counts of Voluntary Mechslaughter,” he read aloud. He knew the sentence for this lesser charge would be a significant reduction, but the potential for it to be many vorns was still there. Knock Out continued to read the screen, but now in silence. They had agreed to lower the count of Corpse Desecration to two-thousand-eight-hundred-and-thirty-seven, and Knock Out quickly noticed that the charges for Appropriation and Destruction of Cybertronian Historical Artifacts, Espionage, Pillaging, Ransom Demand, Receipt of Stolen Goods, Sabotage, Theft, and the Wanton Destruction of Alien and Cybertronian Property had been removed, but the charges of Interplanetary Alien and Cybertronian Smuggling, Alien and Cybertronian Torture, Alien and Cybertronian Kidnapping, Impersonation of a Licensed Medical Professional, and Hostage Taking remained. It appeared that the Council was not willing to forget his mistreatment of the humans and his lack of a medical license so easily.

Knock Our scrolled to the second page, where an addendum had been added, which, in his surprise, he read out loud. “’The accused agrees to testify against the Decepticon Supreme Leader, General Megatron of Tarn, in High Court.’ _What!?”_ he quickly looked back up to Ratchet, his red optics wide with fear.

Ratchet quickly raised a hand. “Yes. In the event that Megatron is ever found and tried, and yes, he _will_ be tried if he’s ever found, you’ll have to agree to testify against him. You were witness to his war dealings for 1.4 million years. Your testimony will be important to seeing that he—”

“But he’ll _kill me!”_ Knock Out could not contain the panic that was rising in his spark, it was so strong that he had to set the data pad down because his hand was starting to shake and he thought he might drop it.

Ratchet found himself wishing First Aid was there, as he so frequently did whenever he was having a one-on-one conversation with Knock Out. He tried, again, to flood his signature with a sense of calm and speak with quiet vocalizations, but he just wasn’t good at it. “If he was caught, Megatron would already be behind bars while awaiting his trial, with proper security measures in place. No one would let him _near_ you. The Autobots will _protect you_ from him, Primus, we’ll do that whether you agree to this or not,” he said, though he noticed that his words were doing nothing to settle the fear pulsing from Knock Out’s EM field. “He’ll have _no way_ of getting to you. This addendum and the ‘information’ that you’re offering as a part of this plea bargain will remain classified and the record will be sealed. He won’t know what you’ve agreed to until the cycle you’re asked to sit on the stand to testify,” Ratchet vented a sigh as he watched Knock Out shake his head in disbelief, and he quickly raised his hands. “Listen to me, just listen: Whatever the outcome of your trial, whatever your sentence is, we’ll keep you safe. You might not be an Autobot yet, but you’re under our protection, criminal or not, alright? I _promise_ you. That’s what Prime would want, and that’s what _we_ want.”

Knock Out held Ratchet’s gaze for a moment longer before he shuttered his optics and hung his head, looking as defeated as he felt. He wanted to believe they would protect him from Megatron, and worse yet, the DJD. He wanted to believe that was really possible, but they didn’t know the Decepticon warlord like he did. They didn’t know how hard that promise would be to keep. But what choice did he really have now? He had given them the best offer he could come up with, he had nothing better than that. He could refuse the counteroffer, plead not guilty, and the let the trial drag on for hell-knows-how long and risk a heavier sentence, or he could accept it, pray to Primus that the Council would show him a little mercy when they got down to sentencing, and take the risk that the Autobots had enough firepower and tactical knowhow to keep him safe from Megatron’s wrath.

With a final sigh, Knock Out opened his optics again as he stepped back to the table where he had placed the data pad, releasing the stylus from its side with the push of a button. He skimmed the document glowing up at him from the screen for a final time before he added his signature, in Cybertronian script, with the writing apparatus. He felt like he was signing his own death warrant.


	36. A Cop

On Earth date November One, Knock Out was back in his cell on the Nemesis, the same one that he had spent the majority of his time in before the mining party had shipped off to Earth. Knock Out knew it was the same one because the tick marks that he had clawed into wall to count the cycles were still there when Bulkhead had deposited him back into the holding unit and activated the glow bars before departing without a word. The trial was to be held tomorrow in the afternoon, but the Council had agreed to recall all bots from Earth ahead of time, lest they run into issues with the Spacebridge or some other, unforeseen circumstances that might prevent them from returning to Cybertron the cycle of the hearing.

Knock Out was not happy about this decision, as it meant spending the night in a location that Pharma could quite easily gain access to, and as he watched Bulkhead walk away from the cell early that evening, he quickly resolved to stay awake, not that he would have any trouble with that to begin with, as the gravity of tomorrow’s events had him so worked up he highly doubted his systems would have powered down even if he tried.

Chromedome had stopped by once, to confirm Knock Out had no more questions, and to reiterate the role the Mnemosurgeon would be playing at tomorrow’s trial. First Aid had come by as well with an Energon ration and a few final words of encouragement before he too departed.

And then Knock Out had settled onto the floor with his back to one corner, positioning himself so that if any mech were to approach the cell, he would be able to see them first, before they saw him, and waited. He had spotted many new bots on the ship when they had stepped out of the Spacebridge that afternoon, but for all of the new faces and activity, it was still eerily quiet down in the brig.

It was around zero-hundred hours when Knock Out heard the footsteps coming down the hallway. His sensors already on high-alert, he instantly lifted his head at the sound of the peds and slowly rose to his own. In the past six hours that he had been sitting there, he had come to a decision: If Pharma _did_ happen to show up at his cell and attempt anything, Knock Out would fight him off as best he could, but if that didn’t work, he’d insist on seeing Chromedome a final time before the trial. Maybe it would be too late then, but Knock Out was no longer willing to let Pharma get away with anything, and he did not care that allowing Chromedome to search his mind for all of the instances Pharma had done him wrong would expose his primary function. If he was going down in this trial, he was going to take Pharma down with him.

Still, Knock Out’s spark was pounding against its chamber the closer and louder the footsteps became, though when the bot’s form finally came into view, Knock Out was immediately relieved. Granted, the black, gray, and white mech with the red chevron brow and twin shoulder-mounted missiles was not exactly Knock Out’s favorite either, but he was a far cry from Pharma, and one that Knock Out knew how to handle, to a certain extent.

“Primus,” Prowl shook his head as he looked beyond the orange glow bars to Knock Out, standing his ground as the ex-‘Con walked right up to him on the other side of them, “they said you were looking a little rough, but I wasn’t expecting _this._ ”

Knock Out narrowed his optics for one nano-klick before he broke out into a smirk. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Prowl in centuries, but if he played his cards right here, he might come out with the upper hand, so he ignored the insult to his finish. “I thought Councilmembers were barred from speaking to the defendant the cycle before their trial. Are you sure you’re supposed to be down here, _Prowler?”_

“Don’t call me that,” Prowl replied, giving Knock Out a look like he found the name as insulting as Knock Out did the rib on his appearance.

“Oh please, that’s how _you_ introduced me to yourself all those millennia ago.”

“Yes, and I expect you to keep that to _your_ self during this trial,” said Prowl as he casually crossed his servos.

“Or what?”

“Or I put you away for life,” Prowl said with a shrug, as though it were as simple as that.

Despite his genuine fear of that possibility, Knock Out still scoffed at the idea. “The others would _never_ allow it.”

Now Prowl moved closer to the glow bars, wrapping his hand around one. “Are you willing to take that chance? Do you trust them that much already? Do you think I can’t convince them? Take a moment to remember who you’re talking to,” he said, and he smirked as Knock Out glared back at him.

Knock Out definitely remembered, though his memories went back way farther than Prowl would have liked to admit.

 

_Prowl had been watching the empty intersection for an hour now, and not a single vehicle had driven through it, or even passed him by as he sat parked in the alleyway between two buildings in the Dead End sector of Rodion. Now Second-in-Command of Autobot security services, Prowl had been reporting directly to Sentinel Prime for a mega-cycle, the headquarters located in Kaon, where he thusly spent most of his time. But sometimes Prowl would make the drive over to Rodion to check up on his latest experiment, the Archivist-turned-cop, Orion Pax. So what if the mech had saved Prowl’s aft in the recent past? That didn’t automatically make him Police Officer material. Thus, Prowl had assigned the new recruit to the worst part of the worst town he could think of that wasn’t Kaon, he didn’t want the mech too close to his own base of operations. The Archivist suddenly thought he could be a cop? Prove it. Therefore, on occasion, Prowl liked to stop by the Dead End to see how Orion was fairing, and to see whether or not law and order were actually being sustained in the area. He honestly never thought the mech would succeed there. It had been a setup, the whole thing, he wanted Orion to fail. As fate would have it, Prowl’s decision had been one of those rare situations where he had been unable to accurately predict the eventual outcome; he was not yet aware that the bot was destined for greatness. At that point in time, no one was._

_As Prowl sat contemplating and calculating Orion’s ability, or lack thereof, to keep all of the Dead End’s unsavory inhabitants in check, the opportunity he had been waiting for finally presented itself as a sporty red vehicle casually rolled through the intersection, ignoring the stop signs completely._

_Prowl immediately pulled out from the alley and into the street, flashing his red and blue lights and sounding his siren once in warning as he positioned himself directly behind the red sports car, and he was surprised when it very quickly veered off into an alleyway and began to slow down. He had honestly been expecting a high-speed chase, that was why he’d even bothered to watch the intersection to begin with, his tires were in need of a decent stretch._

_“Pull over and assume your primary mode,” Prowl’s voice commanded from his external PA system, he himself remaining in vehicle mode in case the mech in front of him tried to make a break for it. He waited until the other initiated his transformation sequence before activating his own, his internal HUD quickly analyzing the other for any weaponry that he might be priming for use, and Prowl was silently thankful when he found none. The fact that the mech was weaponless made even more sense when Prowl’s blue optics came to settle on the metal collar that circled the bot’s throat. Great, it was one of **those.** Prowl gave an inward sigh as he prepared himself for the usual offer of sexual favors in return for being let off with a warning. Prowl knew this one would try, they **always** tried. The mech was already giving him a look that suggested he knew exactly how attractive he was and planned to use it to his advantage._

_It had been well over a hundred mega-cycles since Knock Out and Arcee had taken up residence in Rodion, and now with that hundred mega-cycles-worth of experience and street-smarts under his belt, Knock Out was quite used to life as a commoner, and he liked to think he was doing well for himself. Although it was a far cry from living with Dai Atlas or any bot of that caliber and influence on Cybertron, and while Knock Out could not honestly say he enjoyed his current living situation, it could always be worse. It **had** been worse, for many mega-cycles in the beginning, and now he was just thankful to be alive, with a roof over his head and Energon rations in the cabinets. He had more than most bots that called Rodion home, and he felt blessed by Primus for that. He owed all of it to his primary function, he was well aware of that fact, so he always made sure to take care of himself. He stayed away from drugs, rarely imbibed in high-grade to the point of excess, and made sure he was always running with the latest software and hardware upgrades available, though now he had to pay for those himself, and at his level, they were not cheap. And it did not matter that the ghetto he lived in was dirty and the buildings in shambles, even though he was surrounded by filth, he made sure he was always spotless and his finish flawlessly scratch-free before leaving the habsuite, because his ability to earn credits depended on it. _

_Still, there were, on occasion, cycles like this, where he was profiled by the local security forces despite doing no wrong, or so he thought._

_Giving Prowl a winning smile, Knock Out quite blatantly eyed him up and down as he approached, sizing the mech up in much the same way the Police Officer was doing to him, though for entirely different reasons. “I didn’t do anything illegal, Officer.”_

_“You failed to come to a complete stop at that intersection back there,” Prowl pointed down the alleyway towards the street before opening his arm panel and tapping his servoscreen. “I’ll need your designation and serial number.”_

_Knock Out rolled his optics to that. Why they even had four-way stops on a street that was generally desolate at all times, day or night, he did not know. Of **course** he rolled through the stop sign, **everyone** did. “Knock Out, serial number PB-892,” he replied, and he maintained his smirk. “And what should I call **you**?”_

_“The Cop That Returned Me to my Rightful Owner,” Prowl muttered as he entered Knock Out’s data into the Cybertronian Crime Information Catalogue, which was wirelessly linked to his servoscreen. He skimmed the very empty file that came up for the mech and narrowed his optics. The bot had no prior criminal record, not even so much as a parking violation, and Prowl knew how frequently bots of this function ended up sleeping on the streets, he’d seen it a thousand times, though the collars around **those** bots’ necks were far less expensive than the one he was looking at now. This mech was clearly not a local resident._

_“Nobody owns me,” Knock Out said with a sigh of annoyance at being temporarily detained as he was, “I’m sure you can see that on your servoscreen.”_

_Prowl’s focus zeroed in on the collar around Knock Out’s neck. “That’s Cyberite. You’re an Elite Class Companion. Don’t you belong in someone’s Iaconian penthouse? Programming like yours isn’t just given away for free and let loose on the streets.” Closing the screen on his arm, Prowl maintained his stern look, one that he had perfected over his many years of policing. “Tell me who you belong to so I can make sure you get back home safely.”_

_Knock Out smiled again. “For someone who clearly knows an **awful lot** about my kind, you seem to be forgetting that we also don’t kiss and tell, not even to Officers like you. But as I stated already, no one owns me, which I’m certain you just confirmed for yourself.” Crossing his arms, Knock Out shifted his weight to one ped and simply waited. “So, are you going to write me that ticket, or what?”_

_Prowl narrowed his optics again. Where was the usual offer of a quick cord-swap that his programming had predicted would be the most likely outcome of this encounter? The mech wasn’t even trying. Prowl honestly felt a little insulted, though suddenly he found his gaze wandering over Knock Out’s frame again, and this time not for the purpose of searching for weapons. And as his focus shifted to the elegantly symmetrical black pinstripes that curved and zigzagged across the red mech’s forearms, one fact kept reappearing in his calculations: Pleasurebots didn’t kiss and tell, not even to Officers like him. They were literally sworn to secrecy, a long-standing tradition among their caste in the same sense that a Medic was sworn to uphold doctor-patient confidentiality. The only difference was that if a Pleasurebot broke that trust the punishment, by law, was death. And who knew the law better than Prowl?_

_“…When was your last upgrade?” Prowl found himself asking._

_“Last stellar-cycle,” Knock Out replied, not missing a beat, “the most up-to-date version available.”_

_“…And you’re equipped?”_

_“Fully.”_

_Prowl shook his head at himself, at the intrusive thoughts now creeping in through his processor, at the amount of shanix in the form of a mech that was standing before him. ”Primus, you must cost a fortune.”_

_“I do,” Knock Out smiled, because he got that a lot, and he liked the idea of mechs looking at him and believing that he was out of their league and too costly for them to afford. He felt as though it gave him a certain power over them, that he was simply too good for the likes of commonbots and they were therefore unworthy of his services. Still, that did not mean he wouldn’t use his skills to his advantage when necessary. He had not planned on making any offers, but he’d never had a cop ask him about his operating systems, either. Clearly this mech was looking for **something.** _

_Slowly, Knock Out took a step towards the Prowl, watching his every move as he approached. This could either go horribly wrong, or completely right, depending on the other bot’s reaction. ”Maybe you’d like a free sample?” Knock Out ventured, and when the other mech did not step away from him, he dared to shift close enough to press his mouth against Prowl’s and cautiously slide his glossa between Prowl’s denta for just a moment. The cop had nice lips, Knock Out would give him that. It was over in nano-klicks, he took just one tiny taste before he leaned away again, and he focused on the information he had just collected as it filtered down his HUD. “Hmm, interesting.”_

_Prowl remained frozen in place, his optics open, barely accepting of the kiss, however brief. This Pleasurebot was now consistently the outlier on all of the calculations he had been tabulating. Normally when Prowl encountered bots from this caste, they would **want** to be handcuffed, or assume that since Prowl was a Police Officer, he must certainly be looking for a rough game of “cops and robbers”, or they would make rude suggestions about where they’d like to put the two missiles he carried on his shoulders. They would ask him how many different ways he might want them, and they always promised they could fulfill every single one. Normally, they were classless and crass and pushy with their EM fields that they were able to fill with what Prowl was certain was a manufactured sense of yearning and lust. Many didn’t even bother to buff out the paint transfers and scratches leftover from their last client before they moved on to another._

_And normally Prowl would have ignored their proposals, written them tickets or arrested them for whatever law they had broken, and gone back to his habsuite after a long-cycle’s work and vented to Chromedome about how Cybertron was going to The Pit, and that bots were living without morals and guidance and that someone should clean up this damn planet. And then Chromedome would chuckle and shake his head like he always did, and remind Prowl that not all bots were as talented at seeing their way through to a successful life as he was, that not all bots had his aptitude for statistical analysis, or his ability to observe up to eight-hundred moving objects and compute their direction of travel in 0.5 nano-klicks. And always Chromedome would end his response with the gentle reminder that **that** was what he found so attractive about Prowl to begin with, his innate capacity for seeing the bigger picture, but only as long as he remembered that other bots, other **lives** , were included in that picture as well, and that those lives were not simply moving objects to be calculated along with the rest._

_But those times were gone now. Chromedome had left Prowl stellar-cycles ago, the politics of Prowl becoming one of Sentinel Prime’s “pawns” proving to be too much for their relationship to handle. Likewise, Prowl had noticed the way Chromedome was falling under the thrall of Orion Pax and his newfound role as a leader against the growing Decepticon movement, and so they had called it quits, and it had not been done without anger and yelling and maybe a few words that Prowl had regretted saying, in the end. Even after all these stellar-cycles, it still stung. He could not shake the feelings of loss, and that often infuriated Prowl. They hadn’t even bonded, they weren’t even close to Conjux Endura, therefore it should not have bothered him so much, but it did._

_Prowl knew that were it not for that current hole in his life, he would have never allowed the Pleasurebot to touch him, but he had never encountered one such as this, either. The mech’s finish was immaculate, his signature inquisitive as though he was genuinely curious about the data he’d gathered, and his red optics were mesmerizing, like they had been specifically designed to allow one lose themselves in their depths. Prowl knew he was being worked here, the Pleasurebot was looking to get out of the ticket, just like any other bot Prowl pulled over on the street, and yet he was somehow entirely different._

_Finally snapping out of the daze the red optics had lulled him into, Prowl took a step back as well. The mech was toying with him, he was certain of it. “You’re not even going to ask me what I **like**?” he said, recalling from past experience of prior arrests the way other Companions, the ones with dull-colored collars and therefore simpler programming, would insist he tell them his deepest and darkest desires._

_“I don’t need to,” Knock Out said with a shrug, “you’ve already told me. You don’t **know** what you like because everything you’ve experienced thus far has been boring, repetitive, **predictable.** All you know is what you **don’t** like. You want something new, something more than just plugging in or going through the motions, something more than you having already anticipated and calculated your partner’s every move down to the final vibration or pulse,” Knock Out raised a hand to rub at his own chin with his fingers as he contemplated the mech before him like something broken and in need of repair. “Because of all that, you find interfacing to be dull and a waste of time, but I can tell that bothers you. It makes you feel disconnected from other bots. You feel like you don’t **get** it, how everyone else can just let go of everything and be in the moment. I could fix that for you, if you want. I could help you feel what they feel.”_

_Prowl had stood in silence, betraying nothing of the truth that Knock Out was speaking. He narrowed his optics. “You only touched me for 1.834 nano-klicks.”_

_“That’s right,” Knock Out said, and he smiled once more. “See what expensive programming gets you? You don’t look willing to give it a try though, so never mind,” he shrugged. “I understand if you’re not interested. It’s a shame, really,” he let his gaze wander over Prowl’s frame one final time, “I would have enjoyed the challenge, I think. So,” he offered his right hand, “the ticket?”_

_Prowl looked to Knock Out’s open palm before he shook his head, changing his mind and ignoring his programming that was telling him that all bots should be held to the same standards in the eyes of the law. “I’ll let you off with a warning, this time,” he said before he turned and started back down the alley. In the same moment that he was internally cursing himself for letting the bot touch him to begin with, his mind was simultaneously and furiously calculating the many, **many** ways in which Knock Out might be able to make good on that offer. The mech was Elite Class, the top of the line model, and he had obvious expertise._

_It was a gifted talent in another subject area entirely that had originally drawn Prowl to Chromedome. The bot was a master of Mechaforensic Sciences and had perfected his skills to practically an artform. He was brilliant, and that intelligence had complemented Prowl’s own expert abilities. But regardless of caste, Chromedome, Prowl, Knock Out, they all three were bots at the top of their professions, the best of the best._

_Prowl stopped walking, his optics momentarily focused on the ground between his peds. Didn’t he **deserve** the best? He finally turned just slightly, to cast a glance back at Knock Out, who had not moved. “…If you’re still up to the challenge, meet me in Sector Delta behind the old teflon packaging warehouse at twenty-three-hundred hours tonight.”_

_“Will I still have to refer to you as ‘The Cop That Returned Me to my Rightful Owner’ then?” Knock Out called back to him._

_“No,” Prowl said as he turned and headed back towards the street, “you can call me ‘Prowler’._ ”

 

“Look,” Prowl vented a sigh and removed his hand from the cell bar so that he could cross his servos, “I’m just here to make sure we both still _respect_ each other.”

“Bullscrap,” Knock Out said with a scowl, “you’re here to make sure all of Cybertron doesn’t find out you paid good credits to be serviced by a Pleasurebot on many, _many_ occasions _._ ”

Prowl narrowed his optics and hissed through his denta, “I swear to Primus, if you let this leak…”

“…your little perfectly controlled reputation gets tossed out the window.”

“I think you’re _forgetting_ that those credits you received were for your _silence_ as much as your services, or are you telling me that you’re no longer willing to uphold your caste’s _honor and traditions_ in that regard?” said Prowl, for in all of the millennia that followed, Knock Out had never come to know of Chromedome’s past relationship with Prowl, and likewise, to the best of Prowl’s knowledge, Chromedome, like all other bots, had never learned of Knock Out’s dealings with him, either. Prowl fully intended to keep it that way.

“That’s _not_ what I am anymore,” Knock Out growled.

“Oh please, yes, it is,” Prowl rolled his optics. “You can cross-train into as many functions as your databanks can hold, Knock Out, but your initial programming is integrated into your solid-state drives and it can _never_ be erased,” he scoffed, looking Knock Out up and down, “And you call yourself a doctor, I figured you would _know_ that.”

“I _do_ know that,” Knock Out countered, matching Prowl’s glare, “I never said it was _erased,_ it’s just not my function!”

Prowled paused, reorganizing his thoughts as he pinched the bridge of his olfactory with his fingers. This was not worth getting angry over, yet. “Listen, do us both a favor and don’t embarrass yourself out there. You’ve come so far, after all, although apparently that medical license was a lie.”

Knock Out was doing nothing to reign his own anger in however, and he forced it out towards Prowl from the other side of the glow bars, though the mech barely seemed to notice. “Well _that’s_ funny, you didn’t seem to _care_ that I wasn’t licensed all those mega-cycles ago when you asked me to medic for the Wreckers.”

“I didn’t _care_ because I assumed you _were_ licensed. I thought I was doing you a favor, getting you a job in your _new function.”_

“Right, like you didn’t run a background check on me first. You offered me that job because no licensed Medic was willing to take it! _No one_ wanted to work with those savages! You _knew_ , Prowl, don’t fragging act like you didn’t. You know _everything.”_

Any other mech would have let such a compliment go straight to his head and smirk in response to the ego-boost, but not Prowl. Instead he sighed, as though knowing everything was a difficult burden to bear. “That’s true, I _do_ know everything. Look, I understand,” he said as he uncrossed his servos again, “war is crazy, war is horrific, it’s survival of the fittest, and the humans,” he shrugged, for after his own Earth experiences in the past, he was not very fond of them, either, “they got in the way of things. _A lot._ But this impersonation of a Medic thing, offlining mechs for their parts, and _corpse desecration?_ Tsk, that’s serious,” he shook his head. “You should have stuck to what you know best, Knock Out.”

Screw it. Knock Out saw the opportunity and he went for it, he was desperate. He did not care that his face was currently scarred and his finish was dull and he was missing a servo. Here’s hoping Prowl didn’t either. He wrapped his fingers around one of the bars and leaned his face closer as he gave a small smirk. “I _do_ know one thing best, you’re right again. Maybe you and I can come to some sort of agreement? A reasonable sentence and your vote for…well, I’m _sure_ you remember.”

Prowl raised one brow before he laughed out loud. “Did you just try to _bribe_ one of the Council members sitting for your tribunal? I ought to add that to your _very_ lengthy list of crimes, but I’ll tell you what,” now Prowl curled his hands around the glowbars and leaned close as well as he lowered his voice, his faceplates a mere inch from Knock Out’s, “instead of doing that, I’ll forget you said anything, and in return you’ll maintain your silence regarding our past interactions.”

Knock Out scowled at Prowl’s response, and at his own stupidity for ever thinking that such an offer had been a good idea. Primus _dammit._ “Ahh, so _bribery_ is out, but _blackmail_ is in. _I_ see how it is,” of course Prowl would turn everything around to work in _his_ favor, and Knock Out knew that was his fault, it was as Prowl had said, he’d forgotten who he was talking to. Now that his offer was effectively off the table, Knock Out tried one more approach as he leaned his forehelm on the glowbars, giving Prowl a look of genuine desperation. He would have never asked any of the other ‘Bots for help in such a fashion, but while there were some things he had forgotten about the cop, there were still plenty he remembered. Dilating his optics in what could only be described as the Transformer equivalent of “puppy-dog eyes”, Knock Out pleaded to the other mech. “Prowl, _please_ help me.”

Narrowing his optics at Knock Out’s attempt to appeal to his core programming’s tendency to steer him into assisting bots in distress, Prowl shook his head. That line hadn’t worked on him in centuries. “This is _way_ worse than a failure to stop, Knock Out. No one can let you off with a warning this time,” he said as he removed his hands from the bars and backed away, now looking as bitter as his EM field suggested he was. “You should have taken me up on my offer all those years ago. Primus knows you wouldn’t have been in _this_ situation if you had.”

“Oh please,” Knock Out could not _believe_ the mech was going back to _that_ after all this time, _right_ back to where they’d started, or ended, rather. “Like your offer was so tempting? As I recall, you wanted me for your _exclusive use_ , _without_ pay!”

Prowl vented a sigh, placing his hands atop his helm momentarily before gesturing to Knock Out with them both. “Yes, it’s called ‘a relationship’! You _did_ eventually figure out how those work, didn’t you? Or were you on Breakdown’s payroll that _whole_ time?”

_Ouch._ Knock Out felt himself physically flinch to that, Prowl’s words cutting straight into his spark, and he had no problem letting the mech know that through the look and signature he sent Prowl’s way. ”That’s a pretty low blow for an _Autobot.”_

“You should have stayed with _me,”_ Prowl said, ignoring the hurt feelings he was picking up on from the other side of the bars. “None of this would have _ever_ happened if you had stayed with me,” he gave Knock Out a final scowl before he turned and stalked back down the hallway. “See you in court, Knock Out.”

Gritting his denta in anger now, Knock Out leaned against the bars to watch Prowl walk off, and he made sure to yell down the hallway after him, even if there was no one else to hear it but the two of them. “Have a nice evening, _Prowler!”_


	37. An Airing of Grievances - Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This hearing/trial/tribunal is only veeeery loosely based on U.S. and International Criminal Court procedures, so attempting to compare it to our reality and what would or would not be permitted in any court of law will only make you laugh and ruin your reading experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.
> 
> Also, I had to break this up into multiple chapters, I'm sorry it's so long.

Jazz’s optics were wide behind his blue visor as he walked the corridors of the Nemesis alongside Blaster, the pair slowly making their way towards Shuttle Bay Five where the entertainment of the cycle was scheduled to take place that afternoon. Jazz had only heard about the Nemesis second-hand. He considered himself lucky to have never encountered the ship while the war was still on, and he had certainly never expected to see the cycle that he would be able to walk her hallways freely. It was not pleasant to realize that he was now walking where Megatron had once walked, or to wonder what these metal walls would say if they could speak, but those feelings were drowned out by Jazz’s perpetual elation at having won the war, and he was determined to keep his spirits, and everyone else’s around him, as high as possible.

Now that Transformers, both Autobots and Neutrals alike, were landing on Cybertron at least twice a cycle, all sorts of reunions and celebrations had been taking place, and Jazz had been more than ready to swap war stories and music files with every bot that had them. Currently as he trailed after Blaster, “We Takin’ Over” by DJ Khaled was playing over his inner-comm. He felt the song was perfect for the time at hand. Winning had never felt this good, and it had been a long, _long_ time coming.

Jazz’s good mood and personal musical soundtrack to life came to a screeching halt when he and Blaster entered Shuttle Bay Five however, as his optics were quickly drawn to the dilapidated and rusting Starhopper S-class shuttle that sat neglected in the corner of the large room. He stared for a moment before he quickly chased after Blaster, grabbing the slightly-taller mech by the servo to force him to stop moving.

“Holdupholdupholdup,” Jazz said as he clung to Blaster’s elbow and steered him back towards the shuttle, and the taller mech with the speakers in his broad shoulders vented a sigh as he allowed himself to be dragged back a few feet so that he could watch as Jazz ran around the small spacecraft to inspect it. Within nano-klicks, Jazz reappeared from behind the hull and quickly pointed to it as he gaped to his fellow Autobot in shock. “Yo, this is my _ship!”_

“Huh?” Blaster said as he too now walked towards the Starhopper with one brow raised first to the ship, and then to Jazz. “Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout, mech? What ship?”

“ _Tina!_ This is Tina!” Jazz stepped to the on-ramp and ran a hand along the ship’s outer bulkhead. “Baby girl, where you _been!?”_

Blaster slowly crossed his servos as he watched Jazz caress the rusted-out vessel like a long-lost lover. “Are you _sure?_ It looks like a piece’a slag ta me.”

Gasping, Jazz paused in his gentle stroke of the ship to narrow his gaze back at Blaster, and to point an accusatory finger at him. “You better take that back, B! You dunno what she’s capable of! Look, when I bought her, I installed seven three-way surround-sound fully-integrated wall speakers,” he said, spreading his hands apart to give an idea of the ship’s interior, “each with a thirty-five kilohertz frequency response rate, a dual-channel amplifier with six high-capacity carbon-sheath electrical condensers, and a five-thousand-watt subwoofer at 1.0 kilohertz that makes the bass so strong it’ll rattle your _spark casing,”_ Jazz clutched a hand to his chest plates then, making a fist against the red Autobot badge there. “She has a file on almost every piece of music that was recorded anywhere on Earth, _ever,”_ he quickly held up a hand and began to count off on his fingers. “Classical, rock n’ roll, rap, folk, Latin, African, Asian, heavy metal, R &B, house, trance, even that weird Gregorian chant stuff Drift likes.”

Blaster blinked his blue optics to all of that, his arms slowly uncrossing as he gave the small ship a sudden look of appreciation. “F’real? You still got the entry code? Open ‘er up an’ let’s have a listen.”

“Damn right I do,” Jazz quickly stepped to the data panel on the siding at the top of the ramp and flipped open the cover, muttering to himself as he tapped at the screen there. “Goddamn Megatron, stealin’ my baby,” he paused though, when his optics caught the flash of red and the silhouette of two twin shoulder-mounted missiles walking past. “Prowl! Yo, did you _see_ this slag!?” Jazz called after the mech, who paused to look up from his data pad. “Dude had my ship this _whole_ _time!”_

Prowl took one look at the aged and broken-down shuttle before casually shifting his gaze down to his data pad again. “I see _slag_ alright. Blaster, I need to you tap into the Nemesis audio systems and rig a few mics. Looks like we’re gonna have a full house,” he said before stepping off without another word.

“Sure thing, Prowl,” Blaster replied before he smirked back to Jazz and all but dragged him away from the ship. “C’mon, Jazz, she ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Jazz vented a wistful sigh as he allowed himself to be hauled away from the shuttle, though he did place his fingertips to his mouth so that he could blow it a kiss. “I love you, Tina! I’m sorry we were apart for so long! I’ll be back, I swear! Daddy hasn’t forgotten about you!”

 

An hour later, in the bowels of the Nemesis, Arcee walked through the now-familiar brig, the rows of cells on either side still empty, except for one.

Stopping in front of the glow bars, she deactivated them at the side-panel and gave Knock Out a look of genuine concern. Where normally she would have teased him about his worn finish, she was now emitting a signature of sympathy. “Are you ready?” she asked him, and she could not help but notice how absolutely run-down he appeared, how the creases of the protoskin under his optics made him look as old as Ratchet, how the cube of Energon rations he’d been issued the night before remained untouched.

“Thank Primus it’s you,” Knock Out said as he vented a heavy sigh, and he resisted the urge to cling onto her for moral support. He’d spent the entire night keeping his nervous energy and emotions surrounding the trial away from his processor, and his head was pounding for his efforts, but he realized Arcee was waiting for an answer to her question, and he quickly nodded before stepping around the recharge slab and out of the cell.

“I volunteered,” Arcee said with a small smile, and she could see Knock Out was thankful for that as they started down the hallway together. She did not bind Knock Out’s one hand to his back with a stasis cuff, or force him to march ahead of her in front of the barrel of one of her weapons. She felt all of that was highly unnecessary, and given her current standing within the Autobot faction, few would question her choices.

As before, they rode the lift up in silence, though once they stepped off onto the second level of the ship and started their walk down the long hallway that would lead them to Shuttle Bay Five, a thick haze of nervousness and tension filled Arcee’s EM field. She did her best to control it, for she had felt a similar unease emitting from Knock Out’s signature the longer they walked, though she felt Knock Out’s mood shift to paranoia instead once he began to question his surroundings.

“Why are we going towards the Shuttle Bays?” he asked Arcee, his optics wide with fear from what, he was not exactly sure.

“It’s for the space, we needed the space,” Arcee replied, trying and failing to calm her signature as well as his.

“What do you mean?”

Rounding the corner of the final corridor, Arcee paused at the intersection of hallways, Knock Out quickly following suit as he blinked to the closed Shuttle Bay door, then back to her as she spoke. “Listen, I need to warn you,” she said, but then paused when she felt Knock Out’s panic on the rise, “it’s nothing horrible, just…You know this trial is public, right?” she asked, only continuing when Knock Out nodded, and she nodded as well as she started to head towards the wide door again. “There’s not really a whole lot going on around here today other than this, so umm…well,” Arcee gave a final pause, and winced a bit at her final words, “there’s a bit of a crowd.”

Knock Out stopped in front of the door, wishing that he could see through it. There was a time he would have loved a good crowd, to be the center of attention, to have everyone’s optics on him, but that time had been reserved for when his finish was flawless and perfect and he felt like as many shanix as he cost, and he had _all of his limbs intact_ and he didn’t feel like _absolute slag._ He tried to settle a glare and a stern look on his features as he searched for some sort of courage within himself, but there was none. “How many?” he asked Arcee.

“At last count?” Arcee said as she pressed the button on the wall panel, and the door swiftly pulled open to the right. “Two-hundred-and-eighty-one. Oh, and uh…it’s being broadcast on the Cybertronian News Network (CNN). Rook and Slamdance have been back for a few deca-cycles now, and we’ve got all the satellites up and running,” Arcee said almost apologetically as she mentioned two of Cybertron’s newscasters.

Knock Out shuttered his optics as he vented a long, drawn-out sigh in one last attempt to steady his nerves before he reluctantly stepped into the Shuttle Bay, only to have his jaw drop when he dared to open his optics to look around. Two-hundred-and-eighty-one bots had crammed themselves into the hangar. The entire room seemed to be one giant, moving mass of metal frames. Biolights and glowing optics of all colors flickered back and forth, and the fumes of oil and axel grease and engines burning fuel were already thick in the air, even though the dock door to the outside was wide open at the far end of the bay.

The largest bots stood against the walls, and those that were larger still were forced to linger outside at the wide-open dock door, their forms packed so close together that Knock Out could barely make out the metallic horizon of Cybertron beyond. Next were the mid-tier bots, those the size of Optimus Prime or Megatron, and then scattered before bots of that height were the rest of them, the five-and-four-and-three-meter mechs and the mini-bots. Those with wings sat perched in the rafters overhead or hung from the ceiling, and those that might have trouble seeing had found seats atop the taller bots that would allow it, and on the remaining shuttles in the bay, one of which Jazz (Knock Out recognized the mech _and_ the ship instantly) was trying desperately to keep others away from.

Now the square recognition patterns within Knock Out’s HUD were spinning and shifting as they focused in on one face at a time as rapidly as his programming could manage, and the designation of any bot there that he had ever encountered before was quickly added to the growing list on the left side of his internal screen: Blurr, Blaster, Jazz, Mirage, Fixit, Pharma, First Aid, Trailcutter, Sideswipe, Wheeljack, Bulkhead, Smokescreen, all of the remaining Vehicons, though their newfound designations did not pop up on Knock Out’s registry. Ultra Magnus, Ironhide, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Prowl, Rodimus Prime, and a final, winged mech that Knock Out did not know were all seated at several tables that were set up end-to-end at one side of the hangar, the only space still free of the crowds, save for Chromedome, who stood beside a makeshift podium waiting there for him. And then there were the dozens of other Autobots that Knock Out did not recognize but their red badges were clearly visible: Rewind, Red Alert, Ramhorn, Hound, Swerve, Inferno, Broadside, Brainstorm, Shock and Ore and Cosmos and many, many more. And interspersed throughout the Autobots and greatly outnumbering them were the two-hundred-plus Neutrals sporting no badge, neither Autobot nor Decepticon, but regardless of affiliation, all optics and visors were focused on Knock Out as Arcee lead the way through the crowd and towards the table where the Council sat.

Floating almost silently above the tables and to the side of Chromedome were cambots, their lenses twisting and turning in and out as they recorded everything taking place around them. Arcee lead Knock Out to the podium where he was to stand and then slipped away into the crowd, and Knock Out swallowed hard as he did his best to ignore the rest of the room full of bots behind him and focus on the seven before him at the table. He had already been doing the exact thing Chromedome had warned him to stop doing, sorting through the incoming data and parsing away his emotions for processing later, because if ever there were a time for that practice, Knock Out knew it was now; he did not care that the mech was standing right beside him and was probably very aware that he was doing it.

After Knock Out and all members of the Council stated their designations and forge locations for the record, Knock Out was instructed to raise his hand and swear over a data pad, containing the oldest digital copy of the Covenant of Primus available, that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Ultra Magnus then gathered his own data pad from the table and scrolled through the screen before speaking.

“Knock Out of Esserlon, under the Cybertronian War Crimes Act of mega-cycle four-hundred-one, as amended in Title Eighteen of the Cybertronian Code, and under Article Thirty of the Code of Interplanetary Conflict, you stand accused of 1.4 million mega-cycles of service as a Commanding Officer to the Tier I Terrorist Organization known as the Decepticons, and of providing direct support and material aid to the Decepticon cause during that time. As such, you are hereby charged with the following, the number of counts which you see onscreen before you,” here Ultra Magnus paused, and Knock Out’s gaze dropped to the podium before him where a screen integrated into the lectern suddenly flickered to life to display his plea bargain agreement. “Voluntary Mechslaughter,” Ultra Magnus continued, “Corpse Desecration, Interplanetary Alien and Cybertronian Smuggling, Alien and Cybertronian Torture, Alien and Cybertronian Kidnapping, Hostage Taking, and the Impersonation of a Licensed Medical Professional,” Cybertron’s current Acting Commander paused again as the crowd of bots that encircled the room went from silent to rumbling as hundreds of vocalizers were all suddenly murmuring at the same time.

Knock Out did not turn around at the noise coming from behind, though he did unconsciously hunch his shoulders a bit. He tried for all of two nano-klicks to pick out some of the words that were being said, though there were simply too many voices for his audials to single out just one, and on second-thought, that was probably for the best. He quickly refocused his gaze back onto Ultra Magnus, trying his best to convey a “Please hurry this up” look without seeming too assertive, though the giant mech blatantly ignored it.

“Knock Out, you and this Council have previously agreed to a plea bargain, which you and all Council members have now signed. Is that your signature on the agreement there?” said Ultra Magnus as he indicated the screen in the podium once more.

Scrolling down to the last page, and noting that the addendum had been redacted from that digital copy, Knock Out nodded before speaking into the mic that had been rigged to the podium in front of him. “Yes.”

“Do you contest any of the crimes charged against you?”

“No.”

“Do you understand that the charges listed herein are felony crimes?”

“Yes.”

“And do you understand that by accepting and signing this plea bargain agreement, it is the same as though you have been convicted of these felony crimes?” Ultra Magnus asked.

“Yes,” Knock Out replied, as he finally allowed his gaze to wander past Ultra Magnus and down the table, to the other mechs sitting there. Ratchet simply stared, his faceplates completely unreadable, Bumblebee looked slightly worried, though Knock Out could tell he was trying to remain stoic. Ironhide seemed to be surveying the crowd, Prowl’s gaze was locked down on his own data pad as he scrolled through the screens with a finger. Rodimus looked positively bored, and Metalhawk, the Neutral, was staring daggers at him.

“And do you understand that by pleading guilty to these charges, you will be giving up all of your rights to a trial, and all of your rights associated with a trial?” Ultra Magnus’s booming voice instantly drew Knock Out’s attention back to him.

“Yes.”

Ultra Magnus had always been known not only for his masterful grasp of the conventions and intricacies of the law, but for his unyielding and, to a certain extent, _irritating_ thoroughness. And although thoroughness ought to be appreciated in a court of law, his list of questions for Knock Out was extensive. Did Knock Out understand that by pleading guilty he would be losing the right to hold public office, to serve on a jury, the right to vote in any public elections? The questions dragged on for thirty klicks, and though Knock Out answered accordingly, he was beginning to wonder if Ultra Magnus was perhaps enjoying this a little _too_ much. The big mech was in his element, and he seemed fully unaware of and unconcerned by the two-hundred-something other bots standing around him that were starting to clear their vents in mechanical “yawns”. Finally, there appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel as Ultra Magnus set his data pad down, his blue optics shifting back to Knock Out.

“Now that we have reviewed your rights, and the rights you have chosen to relinquish, do you have any questions regarding your plea bargain agreement?” he asked.

“No.”

“Very well. At this time the Council officially accepts your plea of guilty under the terms of your plea agreement. In so doing, the Council is bound by the agreement made today to impose a sentence agreed to under Rule 11 e 1 C. As is customary after a guilty plea, we will now hear a victim impact statement,” Ultra Magnus gestured with his newest large hand off to the side, and all optics followed it as a Vehicon now stepped from the crowd. The purple and black grounder’s red visor was narrowed on Knock Out as he moved to stand to the front right side of the table where a second podium had been placed, a data pad in his hand. “Please state your designation for the record,” Ultra Magnus said, once the mech was in position.

“My designation is Caps Lock,” the Vehicon spoke into the mic, and not a single bot could have missed the wince Knock Out gave to that before he hung his head and did not look up from the podium again. “I served under Megatron and was stationed on the Decepticon warship Nemesis for thirty-four vorns,” Caps Lock paused there, to glare again at Knock Out before he looked to the Council, and then to the crowd as he continued. “All Vehicons are war-born bots. We were created by Shockwave to serve Megatron and his Decepticon cause as infantry and air assault troops. We were not treated fairly or kindly by Megatron, or by _any_ of his Commanding Officers, Knock Out included.” Caps Lock turned his glare back to the ex-CMO at that, then continued to read from his data pad.

“During my time on the Nemesis, I personally witnessed Knock Out intentionally deactivate at least two of my fellow Vehicon brethren, dismantle their parts from their frames, and then reattach those parts to other Vehicons. One of the two Vehicons that I saw Knock Out deactivate was my bond-mate,” Caps Lock practically growled behind his mask as he stared at Knock Out, though Knock Out still did not look up from the podium. Caps Lock continued. “My bond-mate never had a proper designation, because we Vehicons weren’t _allowed_ to have designations, but his serial number was VCN-5745. On the cycle Knock Out took his life, 5745’s legs were shattered during an Energon mine collapse on Earth GPS coordinates 36.5323’N, 116.9325’W. I was also injured during that collapse,” Caps Lock paused again, his grip tightening on the data pad he held with both hands. “The survivors Bridged 5745, myself, and the other wounded back to the Nemesis for medical treatment. There were at least six other injured bots due to that collapse, some worse off than others. There weren’t enough medslabs in the Medbay for all of us. From where I lay on the floor of the Medbay, I watched Knock Out extinguish my bond-mate’s light and dismantle his frame for parts,” Caps Lock looked up from the data pad he was reading from once more to all but yell at Knock Out now. “When I witnessed Knock Out doing this, I _begged_ him to stop, but he ignored me, like he _always_ ignored everything _any_ Vehicon said to him. At the time, I was physically incapable of coming to my bond-mate’s aid, or I would have tried to stop Knock Out myself, even though I knew he would have deactivated _me_ for attempting as much. Not a cycle goes by now that I don’t find myself wishing I could have found the strength to stand up to him then, because life without my bond-mate at my side has been worse than _anything_ Megatron ever put us through. I miss my bond-mate _every cycle_ and the _only_ reason he’s gone is because of Knock Out, not because of the mine collapse, or because the Autobots shot him up, or because Megatron kicked him off the Nemesis and he fell to Earth. No, it’s because on _that_ cycle, Knock Out decided _my bond-mate_ was going to be the parts donor for everyone else.”

Caps Lock paused again, this time to glance out at the crowd that he was suddenly now fully aware of again, as though his emotions in reading his statement had been blocking reality from his optics for a moment. He quickly glanced around and back behind his shoulder, to the small cluster of Vehicons that stood huddled together among the Neutrals and Autobots, and they all eagerly nodded for him to continue. Venting a heavy sigh, Caps Lock turned back to the table of Councilmembers and began again.

“Bots are supposed to be able to trust their Medics, but we couldn’t trust Knock Out, and when we all heard that he isn’t even properly licensed to _be_ a Medic at all, that honestly came as no surprise. Many of us had injuries at one time or another that were never repaired because we were afraid to go to Knock Out for treatment. We were afraid of seeking help from him, our only Medic, because we were constantly worried that he would kill us for parts,” Caps Lock swallowed hard, stopping to read what was on the data pad before speaking once more. “Myself and many others were often ordered to accompany Knock Out on his ‘scavenging missions’, where he would search Cybertron and other locations for the frames of deactivated bots. He would force us to carry servos and spark chambers and Energon lines back to his shuttle with our _bare hands_ , and he would threaten to kill us if we disobeyed his orders. He would force us to carry the body parts of our own fallen comrades back to the ship after every battle so that he could ‘recycle’ them,” Caps Lock stopped there for a moment to stare down at the podium, as though he were reliving the memories he spoke of, but then he quickly shook his head and moved on. “After Breakdown was deactivated,” Caps Lock said, and finally, for the first time, Knock Out blinked up to hold the Vehicon’s gaze, which caused Caps Lock to glare as he repeated himself, “after Breakdown was deactivated, things only got worse. Knock Out consumed high-grade and injected regularly, he was rarely sober. Most cycles, if he wasn’t in the Medbay, he would wander the hallways of the Nemesis looking for one of us to harass. We were as afraid of him as we were of Megatron. If you looked at Knock Out wrong, he would come after you. If he caught you, he would beat you, or drill holes into your plating, or threaten to cut your limbs off and give them to ‘a more deserving mech’,” Caps Lock said with a scowl as the former CMO looked away once more, and then Caps Lock looked to the Council at the table. “Life on the Nemesis was already the Pit for us Vehicons, but Knock Out made it even worse. If you didn’t die in battle, there was just as big of a chance that you were going to die on Knock Out’s medslab. As a Medic, Knock Out was supposed to be the _one bot_ on the ship that all troops were supposed to feel comfortable going to for help, but in reality, he was the exact opposite. He _killed_ bots for their parts. He killed my _bond-mate_ for parts. He’s a murderer and immoral and deranged, and he deserves to spend the rest of his cycles behind bars for what he did,” Caps Lock eyed the data pad in his hands before blinking back to the Councilmembers at the table. “I want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to speak, for myself and on behalf of my Vehicon comrades, and I hope that when you’re deliberating Knock Out’s sentence, you remember the lives that his actions have _ruined,_ the trust that he _broke_ by _pretending_ to be a Medic, and all the pain and suffering that he caused,” Caps Lock again glared to Knock Out with his final words before he turned and stepped back into the crowd.

The moment after Caps Lock had mentioned things getting worse once Breakdown was gone, Knock Out had dared to look to the Vehicon, but then quickly looked back to the screen glowing up at him form the podium. All that Caps Lock had said was true, yet since Knock Out was not being asked to confirm or deny it, he would do neither. He’d had to physically bite his glossa at the mention of Breakdown deactivating, and then again at the mention of his behavior in relation to that occurrence. It was true that he had never liked the Vehicons, he had always treated them as lesser beings, even Breakdown had yelled at him for bullying them, on occasion. Knock Out had not thought the Vehicons would have noticed the difference in his demeanor once Breakdown was gone because truthfully, he had assumed they were too stupid to realize such behavioral changes. Then again, he’d been so intoxicated for so many stellar-cycles in a row for a while there that he could not honestly recall one cycle from the next, but he had definitely done everything that Caps Lock said, and frequently.

Now that Knock Out was fully aware of the Vehicons’ conscious state, and how much they had been aware of and how they had suffered under his own hand, _now_ he began to question his own actions, and he found himself unable to meet the visored gaze of Caps Lock as the mech had carried on with his statement. Ignoring Chromedome still standing beside him, Knock Out had gripped his helm with his hand as he forced the emotional responses away from his processor at the thought of being the one responsible for deactivating _any_ bot’s bond-mate. Primus, who in the Pit knew the Vehicons could even _have_ bond-mates, a connection between two bots that was mere steps away from Conjux Endura? Knock Out leaned his elbow on the podium, his helm in his hand, and he was more than happy when Ultra Magnus finally gave Caps Lock a nod and the mech moved into the crowd once more.


	38. An Airing of Grievances - Part II

“The Council thanks you for your statement, Caps Lock,” Ultra Magnus said, “and for having the courage to speak at this hearing today.” He then turned back to his data pad, shifting through the display with a finger before speaking again. “At this time, Councilmember Ironhide will recount the contributions the defendant has made to the Autobot cause which, in accordance with Article Fifteen Section Nine B ii of the Cybertronian Code, shall be taken into consideration for his final sentencing.”

His attention on Ultra Magnus, Ironhide gave the taller mech a nod, then glanced down to the data pad on the table before him. He cleared his vocalizer before he read aloud the words that glowed up at him from the screen. “The Cybertronian Council recognizes the followin’ contributions made by the defendant, Knock Out of Esserlon, to the Autobot cause, an’ acknowledges the significance o’ these contributions, an’ does deem them as actions favorable towards his good moral standin’ an’ character: Durin’ the cycles of the final battle o’ the Great War that did take place on Cybertron, the defendant did state his desire ta join Team Prime an’ the Autobots before he was captured. Durin’ his confinement, the defendant did provide Autobot Commander Bumblebee with information that lead to the recovery of a map to one of Decepticon Commandin’ Officer Shockwave’s laboratories. The defendant did also thwart the attempt made by Decepticon Second in Command, Lieutenant General Starscream, ta overtake the Nemesis prior ta the final battle against Unicron. The defendant did also provide the locations ta over a dozen additional laboratories an’ weapons caches, resultin’ in the recovery of over seven thousand crates o’ Energon, eight-hundred-an’-fifty-three types o’ weaponry an’ explosive ordnances, over one-hundred-thousand rounds o’ munitions, three-hundred-fifteen crates o’ medical supplies, an’ various other instruments an’ provisions, all o’ which played a critical role in the early stages of planetary restoration efforts. The Council also recognizes the medical aid that the defendant did render to Commander Bumblebee durin’ a scoutin’ mission, which did save Commander Bumblebee’s life, an’ the Council does also recognize that the defendant’s actions in a past encounter with the Autobot Medic, First Aid, did also save his life,” Ironhide concluded as he finally looked up from the data pad and out into the crowd, and though Knock Out did not turn around to confirm it, he was certain that Ironhide’s gaze had come to rest on First Aid, wherever the small Medic was standing amongst the masses.

“So it is noted”, said Ultra Magnus as he tapped at his own data pad before shifting it aside and folding his servos on the table as looked to the ex-‘Con. “Knock Out, as Councilmember Ironhide noted in the recounting of your contributions, you’ve previously stated you wish to align yourself with our faction, to become an Autobot. Do you now still hold this desire?”

Knock Out had been listening intently as Ironhide spoke. He thought that hearing all of his “good deeds” read aloud would have been something to feel good about, but he was still quite certain it was not enough, especially coming after everything that Caps Lock had said. His lingering worry that he would end up behind bars for the next thousand mega-cycles now two-fold, Knock Out blinked up to Ultra Magnus at the question. Would the Acting Cybertron Commander, or _any_ bot in this room, believe a word he said now? “Yes, I do,” Knock Out replied, though he was unsure how convincing he sounded, now that fear was beginning to seep into his signature and permeate the area around him, despite his efforts to keep his EM field close to his frame. He again swept his gaze over the seven mechs sitting at the table, and noted that all of them were giving him the exact same looks as before (or lack thereof, where Prowl was concerned), though now Rodimus had his chin propped up in a hand as he leaned on the table, looking more like a bored student stuck in a lecture than a sitting member of the Cybertronian Council.

“Very well, then,” said Ultra Magnus, and he too looked down the row of mechs to his left as he continued. ”In addition to determining your sentence, the Council will vote on whether or not you, after completing your sentence, will have earned the right to join the faction and wear the Autobrand. The vote on this request will require a two-thirds majority to pass.” Ultra Magnus once again turned back to Knock Out. “Knock Out, you will be given the opportunity in this tribunal here and now to plead your case in regard to your desire to become an Autobot however, before you proceed, in the interests of democracy and a fair judicial system, the Council will first extend that same opportunity to all bots present here today who may wish to speak on your behalf concerning this matter.”

Knock Out blinked to that. He had expected to be offered the chance to speak, and so he had prepared a small recitation beforehand, but he was not expecting the opportunity for others to speak on his behalf. Maybe this was supposed to be some kind of joke from the Council, knowing that no bot in their right mind would publicly come to Knock Out’s defense?

“I now open the floor to any bot present who would speak on Knock Out’s behalf,” said Ultra Magnus as he looked to the crowd and gestured to the empty podium where Caps Lock had stood. “If you are to speak, please remember to state your designation for the record, and please note that Councilmembers may ask you and the defendant follow-up questions to clarify your statements.”

As he was expecting no one to approach, Knock Out set his jaw tight and gave a small glare to the data screen on the lectern as he shut it off with a tap of his finger. This had probably been Prowl’s idea, a final kick in the aft before he sent Knock Out away for life. Knock Out was startled then, when he heard footsteps behind him and spotted First Aid as he stepped to the empty podium to adjust the mic to his height. Primus bless the little Medic, he still wasn’t giving up. Knock Out almost lost it right then and there, and he had to momentarily shutter his optics and pinch his brow with his fingers to keep his emotions at bay. He didn’t deserve to have this mech try and defend him, he knew that.

First Aid placed his hands on either side of the podium as he looked to the Council’s table, taking a moment to clear his vocalizer. Before he spoke however, he paused as though considering something, then his facemask parted down the middle as he retracted it to the sides to reveal his mouth. He was not certain why he did it, but suddenly the mask had felt like something he was hiding behind, and he wanted the Council to hear his words clearly when he spoke them. “My designation is First Aid,” he said into the mic, giving a slight cringe at the sound of his voice booming up and around the vaulted room. “I’m an Autobot. I was a Medic for Team Prime for 2.5 mega-cycles, and I continue to be a Medic for Team Bumblebee on planet Earth. As Councilmember Ironhide has already pointed out, Knock Out saved my life once. We sort of…ran into each other on Cybertron, mega-cycles ago,” he said, though he did not mention what Knock Out had been _doing_ on Cybertron when he came across him. “There was this acid rainstorm that we got caught up in and he…he pulled me out of it when I didn’t think I could make it out on my own, and that saved my life,” First Aid looked to Knock Out then, smiling at the memory, and the ridiculousness of that entire evening, and Knock Out was peering back at him through his fingers, like he was afraid to look at the mech straight on. “But I noticed,” First Aid continued as he turned to the Council once more, “that you failed to mention the _second_ time Knock Out saved my life. When we came across each other that cycle, it’s true that he did hold me captive against my will, you have that in your list of charges there,” he gave an upnod to the table full of data pads, “but I think it should be noted for your record that instead of taking me back to the Nemesis, Knock Out traded me to the Team Prime Autobots for the Phase Shifter. I know that was a hostage situation, another one of the charges, and I know it sounds _bad_ that Knock Out did that, but it saved my life, and he knew that it would, didn’t you, Knock Out?” First Aid looked back to the ex-‘Con, who had finally set his hand back on the podium. “You knew what would happen if you brought me back to the Nemesis, so you chose to trade me to the Autobots instead. Isn’t that true?”

Knock Out suddenly felt like his role and First Aid’s were the exact reverse of the conversation they were having, that the Medic was now in fact attempting to save _his_ life, and again he felt he was unworthy. “Yes, that’s true,” he said quietly, though his attention was suddenly pulled from First Aid as he saw, from the corner of his optic, Prowl finally raise his head to look between the two podiums. _Slag, here it comes._

“First Aid,” Prowl said, almost with a sigh as he set his elbows on the table and steepled his fingertips together, “you’re a Medic, and you also taught at the Iacon Medical Academy, is that correct?”

“Yes,” First Aid replied, lifting one edge of his visor at the question.

“Records show that Knock Out attended the IMA while you taught there. Was Knock Out ever your student?”

“No.”

Prowl nodded to that before turning his blue gaze to Knock Out, who was already glaring at him. “What mega-cycle did you graduate from the Academy, Knock Out?”

So, this was how it was going to be, was it? The cop was going to try and undermine everything good First Aid had to say about him. Knock Out continued to glare as he replied. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t graduate?”

“No.”

“Did you pass the Cybertron Medical Licensing Examination, a test that _all_ Medics are required to pass in order to legally practice in the function of Medical Sciences?”

“No.”

Prowl nodded again, flicking his gaze to First Aid, who appeared unsure as to how he should be reacting to the questions, if at all. “But you still held yourself out as a Medic, is that correct, Knock Out?”

“Yes,” Knock Out said, his optics narrowed. Why was Prowl going over this? They _all knew_ it to be true, it was one the charges, for Primus’s sake.

“Did you know,” said Prowl as he raised a brow back to Knock Out, “that under Section Fifty-six of the Cybertronian Penal Code, the impersonation of a licensed medical professional is illegal?”

“Yes.”

“But you went ahead and told everyone you were a Medic anyway, regardless of the law?”

Right, _this_ was Prowl’s _real_ intent then, undermine anything good _and_ drag Knock Out’s designation through the mud, as though Knock Out had not already done that enough for himself. “Yes,” Knock Out said with a vented sigh.

“How long have you been practicing without a medical license?”

Knock Out tilted his chin up a bit to Prowl in a very small gesture of defiance. The mech had some nerve sitting up there, asking such things given their shared history. But Knock Out knew that the moment he might mention that, Prowl would mention the attempted bribery in retaliation. Thus forced to play along, Knock Out shrugged as he replied. “As long as the war.”

“Four million mega-cycles of practicing medicine without a license, then?”

“Yup,” Knock Out said with a scowl, and if he could have crossed his servos, he would have. Primus, he missed being able to cross his servos.

Bumblebee had been sitting silently by for the entire tribunal thus far. This was one of his first experiences in an official capacity as a Commander, and it honestly pained him a bit that it had to be a tribunal. He had raised no issue with Ultra Magnus taking the lead on this one, for his knowledge of Cybertronian and intergalactic law was limited. Now though, he had been watching the interactions between Prowl and Knock Out and he did not like where they were going. There was an unexpected tension between the two that Bumblebee could sense quite clearly, though he was uncertain where it was coming from within both of them. He leaned forward in his seat as he glanced to Prowl, then Knock Out, and interrupted them. “Knock Out, what did you think would happened to First Aid if you had taken him back to the Nemesis?”

Knock Out, thankful for the distraction, quickly refocused his red optics on Bumblebee and spoke before Prowl could get another word in. “Megatron would have tortured him for information on the Autobots. Once Megatron broke him, he would have forced First Aid to work in the Medbay treating the Decepticons,” he said quickly, though he could not help giving First Aid a guilty glance.

Prowl eyed Bumblebee at his question before jumping right back in after Knock Out’s response. “You’ve tortured Autobots _yourself,_ _haven’t_ you, Knock Out?”

Here Knock Out paused as he tried to reign his anger back in. He knew Prowl was trying to make him lose it, to force him into yelling and cursing and perhaps even getting violent, like they all assumed any stereotypical Decepticon would. Knock Out had to keep telling himself not to fall into Prowl’s trap. He needed to be the exact opposite of a stereotypical Decepticon. “Yes, I have,” he finally said, his gaze now locked on the podium in front of him.

“How many?” Prowl barked, and Knock Out curled his pointy fingers around the edge of the podium at the question.

“I didn’t exactly _keep count._ Five? Six?” he shrugged.

“Chromedome,” Prowl, and the entire crowd following, now finally turned his attention to the Mnemosurgeon who had been standing by the entire time, behind and just to the left of Knock Out’s podium. Now he took a step forward to stand beside Knock Out, and Prowl, for the first time in a while, felt suddenly nervous, seeing the two of them standing there, side by side, hopefully _completely_ unaware of the other’s significance in his life. Prowl would never admit it, but this trial was quickly becoming one of his worst nightmares come true. “Do you know the answer to that question?” he asked.

Chromedome was the posterchild of stoicism. He eyed Prowl from behind his yellow visor in silence for just long enough to make the other mech give an involuntary pulse of annoyance through his EM field before he finally responded. “Yes.”

“How many, then?” Prowl was scowling now.

“I can’t answer that,” said Chromedome, strictly adhering to the rules, though he did turn to the ex-‘Con with a questioning look, “unless Knock Out is willing to allow me to answer on his behalf?” and he gave the mech a subtle look that suggested he probably should.

Knock Out did not intentionally initiate his primary programing as he glanced between Chromedome and Prowl, it had initiated of its own accord, the same way that it had kicked into gear when he had realized the proverbial electricity between First Aid and Ironhide. It was like a sixth sense that Knock Out had zero control over, and now as he felt the animosity and resentment being pushed back and forth between Prowl and Chromedome’s signatures, his optics went wide with the realization of where those feelings were coming from. Perhaps he should have been mad that they were possibly both using him as a pawn against each other, but Knock Out found that he was honestly glad to have Chromedome on his side, regardless of whether that was morally and professionally right or not. He quickly looked back to the Mnemosurgeon and nodded to his previous question.

Chromedome returned the nod, then casually glanced back to Prowl. “Three.”

“What were their designations?” Prowl asked, his optics narrowed.

“Aside from Smokescreen, Knock Out was never told their designations.”

“And the other two, did Knock Out kill them afterwards?”

“No.”

“Who killed them, then?”

“He doesn’t know,” Chromedome said, almost too calmly as he held Prowl’s gaze.

Prowl glared back at Chromedome as though the two of them were engaged in a very inappropriately-timed staring contest. A part of Prowl wanted to stand up and call Chromedome out on his behavior, to point out how he was obviously assisting Knock Out in this trial only to get back at Prowl himself, somehow, and for what? A four-million-year-old grudge? Prowl shook his head, ignored his programming that was telling him to hold Chromedome’s gaze until the other mech faltered, and quickly looked down. If Chromedome had become so basic as to think he was somehow “winning” here by not being the first to blink, so be it. “Alright,” Prowl relented before catching Knock Out’s gaze once more. “Knock Out, would you have tortured First Aid yourself if Megatron had ordered you to do so?”

And Knock Out, now ignoring his own programming as well, could not help but gape to Prowl at the question. “ _No_ , that’s why I gave him back to Prime to _begin_ with! I didn’t want to be forced to harm him!”

“Why not?” Prowl asked as he shrugged a shoulder. “You clearly had no problem harming the Vehicons.”

Knock Out bristled to that and quickly turned his attention to Bumblebee, another mech that he hoped to Primus was somewhat on his side. “I already answered these questions when you asked me the same thing _two mega-cycles ago!_ Don’t you remember?”

“I do,” Bumblebee reassured Knock Out before he turned to Prowl. “Knock Out’s reasoning back then was that was First Aid was too good and innocent to be surrounded by Decepticons, and that if he were taken back to the Nemesis, he wouldn’t survive. I believed Knock Out then, and I still believe him now.”

“But the Vehicons weren’t good or innocent?” Prowl asked as he looked to Knock Out once more. “Your supposed rationale for torture and violence is inconsistent.”

“I wouldn’t _be here_ if it weren’t for him!” First Aid interrupted, when he suddenly realized that the others may have forgotten he was standing there to begin with, and indeed each of the Councilmembers, Chromedome, and Knock Out all blinked back to the Medic in surprise. “I would have never joined Team Prime, I would have never made it back to _any_ Autobot base if it weren’t for Knock Out,” First Aid said, now staring directly at Prowl as he spoke. “Knock Out knew I wouldn’t have made it on the Nemesis, and I don’t _care_ if that makes me seem like a pansy-aft! He _knew,_ and that’s what makes him _different_ than all the other Decepticons. He can still see the good in bots. He _knows_ the difference between what’s right and wrong and he _knows_ that some of what he’s done in the past is wrong, and _that’s_ what makes him one of _us,_ the fact that he _knows,_ and the fact that he’s willing to admit guilt and change his ways and start over. We need to give him a chance. _You all_ need to give him a chance,” First Aid practically growled, and his anger was obvious to all even before he slammed his facemask closed and stormed off, away from the podium and back into the crowd.

Knock Out blinked after First Aid, words of gratitude on the tip of his glossa, but he was forced to bite them back when he spotted Pharma shifting his way through the throng of bots against one side of the room, the Seeker shamelessly stepping right over anyone smaller than he was as he eventually made his way to the podium. The smirk that Pharma was giving as he readjusted the mic made Knock Out’s Energon lines run cold.

“Distinguished Councilmembers,” Pharma began as he gestured to the table with a slight bow, “I am Pharma, CMO of Station Delphi and long-time member of the Autobot movement, as you are all well-aware. I stand before you today,” he paused, and he let the silence drag on for three nano-klicks as he turned his smile to Knock Out, who now looked so horrified that Pharma thought the mech might honestly attempt to make a break for it and head for the open dock door. Pharma watched Knock Out squirm under his gaze for four more nano-klicks before continuing, “I stand before you today simply to commend Knock Out for saving my combinermate, First Aid, from the perils of the acid rainstorm, and for keeping him from Megatron’s clutches. For that, I am eternally grateful,” he said, still smiling as he then nodded to the Council again. “That is all.” Pharma then turned and moved back to his spot in the crowd. He did not wait to see if the Council had any questions for him, and Knock Out was silently thankful that they didn’t.

Knock Out shuttered his optics as he hung his head. _Fragging Pharma._ What killed Knock Out the most was that Pharma’s blessing would actually _count_ for something with the Councilmembers, the mech’s words might have enough sway over any one of them to give Knock Out their vote. Pharma would probably come looking for his repayment later then, even though Knock Out had never asked him for any favors. His remaining armor plates wilting at that thought, Knock Out rubbed at his aching helm again, though he looked back up to the table when one of the Councilmembers suddenly spoke.

“Those were some lovely words, Doc,” Rodimus Prime said, his first time speaking the entire trial thus far. He clicked on his data pad and scrolled through several screens there, clearly lost for a moment, though he seemed unconcerned. “I wanna go back to that torture stuff for a klick. This report says you kidnapped humans a few times. It also says you tortured one for several stellar-cycles,” he looked back up to Knock Out then, one brow raised. “What’ve you got against the humans, mech?”

Knock Out narrowed his gaze on Rodimus, on _Hot Rod._ The damn bot looked as flashy and flawless as ever, as though four-million mega-cycles of war had actually done him _good._ Knock Out was so jealous of his perfect finish and soft-glowing biolights that he was able to ignore the threat of Pharma for now, and that was saying something. “The only humans I ever captured were working with the Autobots,” he said, his hand still gripping the podium.

“The human, Vince, was _not_ working with us,” Ultra Magnus corrected.

“I assumed that he was at the time,” Knock Out quickly replied. “I incorrectly thought it was Bumblebee’s pet — Bumblebee’s _friend,_ Rafael.”

“What about this human you tortured for stellar-cycles, then?” said Rodimus as he held up his data pad, where a photo of Silas glowed on the screen.

Knock Out did not look at the photo, though he knew who it was based on the silhouette. He kept his red gaze locked on Rodimus’s faceplates. “What about it?”

“Would you care to _explain_ to the Council _why_ you did that?” Rodimus asked as he gestured down the table with a hand.

“ _It_ and I had a score to settle,” said Knock Out, and memories of his past conversation with Ratchet were suddenly flickering through his processor, but this was still one thing he was simply not willing to let go of. Silas had _deserved_ to suffer.

“Oh, really?” Rodimus said as he set the data pad down, leaned back in his chair, and laced his fingers together behind his head. _“Do_ tell.”

Knock Out glared at the mech’s casual attitude as he spoke. “It captured and tortured my… _assistant_ and then later, after my assistant was killed in a separate skirmish, the human came across my assistant’s frame and integrated itself into him. The human was using his frame as an exoskeleton. It was part human and part machine. It was trying to become one of us,” Knock Out shook his head at the very notion, clearly disgusted by the idea. “Megatron allowed it to assist in the Decepticon cause, but he eventually found it unworthy of service, and gave it to me to do with as I saw fit.”

“Why would Megatron give the human to you to do with as you ‘saw fit’?” Prowl spoke up once more, and he eyed the photo of Silas on his own data pad before looking back to Knock Out. “I think what you _mean_ to say is that Megatron gave the human to you _knowing_ that you would torture it, isn’t that right?”

Knock Out merely shrugged a shoulder. He wasn’t going to deny it. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Did Megatron _tell_ you to torture it? Did he _order_ you to do that?”

“No and no.”

“So, torturing the human was _your_ idea?” Prowl asked, knowing that Knock Out was walking right into his trap.

“Yes,” Knock Out shrugged again. He just didn’t care anymore.


	39. An Airing of Grievances - Part III

Ratchet had been as silent as Rodimus Prime for the majority of the proceedings, though unlike Rodimus, he had been paying close attention. The moment the topic of torturing Silas had been addressed, he had tried desperately to catch Knock Out’s gaze with his own, hoping that he might be able to somehow silently push him towards depicting himself in a more favorable and remorseful light, but Knock Out was apparently refusing to look at him on purpose. Now, as Ratchet listened to Prowl so easily lead Knock Out to admit such a huge fault, he felt he had to speak up, to try and guide him in another direction. Did he agree with the torture? No, but he was certain he knew the real reason behind the _why_ now, and it was time to bring that to the forefront. Ratchet leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands together on the table. “Knock Out, when you say your ‘assistant’, you mean Breakdown, don’t you?”

It was true that Knock Out had been avoiding Ratchet’s gaze once the questions started rolling in, though now he was forced to acknowledge the Medic, and the look he gave him was fleeting before he focused on the podium once more. “Yes.”

“How long was he your assistant? Give me an estimate of how many mega-cycles,” Ratchet said, keeping his tone as calm and non-accusatory as he could.

“Two million mega-cycles.”

“Did you know Breakdown before that?”

“Yes.”

“How many mega-cycles?”

Knock Out frowned, checking his databanks and chronometer for the timeframe. “Another…one million, give or take.”

“So, you knew Breakdown for approximately three million mega-cycles.”

“Yes.”

“Would it be fair to say that you and he were also good friends?”

Knock Out finally looked up from the lectern to lock optics with Ratchet. He saw where this was going now. He had, in fact, planned on the possibility of this line of questioning from the Council, that was why he’d shown Chromedome the memory of the Conjux Ritus in the first place. But now that the time had come to use it in his defense, Knock Out was suddenly not feeling as righteous and courageous to reveal that very personal bit of information about himself as he had been before. Then again, two-hundred-eighty-one bots and anyone in the galaxy that was streaming CNN had not been present the cycle he had made that decision, either. “Yes,” Knock Out said, after inhaling and exhaling deeply through his vents.

Ratchet nodded to that and continued. “When the human, Silas, assimilated himself into Breakdown’s frame, did it upset you?”

“Of _course_ it did,” Knock Out said, giving Ratchet a look as if to say _“Wouldn’t **you** be upset!?”_

“And Megatron knew this?”

“I never told him outright, but…yes. Yes, Megatron knew. That’s why he gave Silas to me when he was done with him.”

“So, you tortured Silas because of what he’d done to Breakdown?”

“Yes.”

“Breakdown was more than your assistant and your good friend, wasn’t he?” Ratchet finally asked, and he did his best to imply with his tone that he understood now, even if he did not agree with it, he understood the rage and the burning desire for revenge.

“Yes, he was,” Knock Out all but muttered, dropping his gaze back to the podium. He kept waiting for the moment that someone in the crowd might heckle him about his response, for someone to make fun of a Decepticon for having any sort of relationship with another bot, but that moment never came.

“What was he to you, then?” Ratchet said, his brows raised even though he already knew what the response would be.

Knock Out kept his head hung low, though he did shift his optics back up to Ratchet as he replied, because he did not want to appear to be embarrassed to admit it, it was just so much harder to say it in front of the entire galaxy, especially considering how long he had kept that fact hidden, regardless of the assumptions and the rumors. “…He was my Conjux.”

“Chromedome,” Prowl suddenly chimed in, “can you confirm that?”

“Yes,” Chromedome said with a nod, “it’s true.”

“How long was Breakdown your Conjux?” said Ratchet before Prowl could get another word in.

“Approximately 2.8 million mega-cycles,” Knock Out said, lifting his head a bit more now that he’d admitted the truth and no one had laughed at him for it.

“Nearly half of the war, then,” Ratchet confirmed.

“Yes.”

“So,” Ratchet said as he vented a sigh, “when Silas captured, tortured, and then later reanimated the corpse of your Conjux Endura, you felt it necessary to extract a little revenge on him for it?”

“Yes,” Knock Out said, his optics narrowing at the thought, “I did,” and he shifted his gaze to Prowl then, who had looked to Chromedome for confirmation. The Mnemosurgen gave a nod.

Bumblebee had been listening and watching Ratchet as the older mech spoke, and sitting next to him as he was, he had been able to pick up on the subtle shifts occurring in Ratchet’s signature. He became aware of what Ratchet was attempting to do, and he found that he was not opposed to it. He took the opportunity then to ask a question of Knock Out that he already knew the answer to as well, because Ratchet had told him, but he also knew that Knock Out’s reply would show the Council and this Shuttle Bay full of bots that a Decepticon, a _former_ Decepticon, would not act so differently than an Autobot in a given situation. “If Breakdown was your Conjux,” Bumblebee said as he caught Knock Out’s gaze, “why didn’t you attempt to rescue Breakdown from Silas when he was captured by MECH?”

“I wanted to,” Knock Out said with a look to Bumblebee that begged for understanding, “but Megatron forbid it. He said that Breakdown didn’t deserve to be rescued if all it took to take him out was a bunch of little humans. I tried to leave to rescue him anyway, but…” Knock Out let his words trail off and he simply shrugged.

“You disobeyed Megatron’s direct order?” Bumblebee asked.

“Yes,” Knock Out said, and again he saw the glances between Prowl and Chromedome, and the nod from the latter.

“Tell me what happened that cycle.”

“Starscream and I made a plan. We decided we would both attempt to rescue Breakdown, regardless of Megatron’s order, because…” Knock Out paused, his mind now swarming with thoughts of Starscream. Where was the Seeker now, today? Was he watching this on CNN from some secret hiding place? Had he found Megatron and gone back to him? Would he ever forgive Knock Out for preventing him from reclaiming the Nemesis from the Autobots? Did that even matter anymore, considering Knock Out may never see Starscream again? Knock Out was suddenly struck by the realization that in an odd way, he had been missing the Seeker. Decepticons were not supposed to have “friends”, but the two of them had spent enough time together that Knock Out supposed he might have considered Starscream a friend, a very needy, whiney, _annoying_ friend. He knew that mech quite literally inside and out due to the countless hours he had spent repairing his frame, over and over and over again. And Starscream had definitely assisted him and kept Megatron off his back more times than Knock Out could count, and he often hadn’t demanded repayment for those times, either. Holy slag, he _missed_ that stupid bot.

“…Because?” Bumblebee prompted, and Knock Out seemed to startle out of a daze, blinking to him before he continued.

“Because…contrary to popular belief, we _did_ _care_ about one another,” Knock Out said once he’d regained his senses, and he glared to Prowl and, finally, to the still-quiet Neutral at the far end of the table that had been scowling at him the entire time, “at least _some_ of us did. Starscream took off first with four Vehicons, and I was supposed to take one of the shuttles and fly to Earth and meet up with them. But Megatron knew I’d try something,” he shook his head then as he looked back to Bumblebee. “He was waiting for me in the hangar when I got there. We fought and he beat me until I was unconscious. If you don’t believe me you can check the CMRD for the injury report,” he looked to Ratchet as he said that. “I was lucky he didn’t kill me. And _that_ is what happened if you disobeyed Megatron’s orders,” and this he directed to Prowl.

Ratchet nodded to Knock Out at that and leaned back in his seat as he glanced to Bumblebee and the others, and then to Ultra Magnus on his left. He was not keen on the idea of using CMRD data to prove points to the public, but he did not think this case would warrant that need, there was plenty of proof without it. “I think everyone at the table has reason enough to know that Megatron beat his own Officers when they disobeyed a direct order.”

Prowl put a hand to his chin, rubbing it idly as he skimmed through his data pad once more. Knock Out knew that look, and he did not like it. “Was Megatron aware you and Breakdown were Conjux Endura?” Prowl asked.

“Not before that cycle, no, but…after that,” Knock Out shrugged, “he figured it out. He knew,” he said. He could not help but look to Bumblebee then as he recalled the memory that he and Bumblebee now shared, and Bumblebee gave him a firm nod of understanding.

“Megatron refused to allow you to go after Breakdown when he was captured, yet he offered the human to you to be tortured because of what the human did to Breakdown’s frame?” said Prowl as he raised both brows to Knock Out.

“Yes,” Knock Out replied, not hiding his annoyance in his tone, “I said that already.”

“That was awfully _nice_ of Megatron, wasn’t it? That seems quite out of character for him.”

Knock Out frowned to that, though he said nothing in response. He knew Megatron had offered him Silas because he had failed to keep his word on giving Knock Out Airachnid once they had captured her. Knock Out had never known why Megatron refused to give him access to her once she’d been confined to the stasis pod. He had hounded Megatron for deca-cycles about it, which was a daring endeavor in its own right. “Soon,” Megatron had told him over and over, until finally he threatened Knock Out with his fists if he ever dared to ask him again. And then it was only a few cycles later that Silas the Zombiecon had escaped the Medbay and went on his killing spree, breaking into Airachnid’s stasis pod, infecting her, and then Soundwave had Bridged her off to one of the moons, an opportunity for revenge lost to the cosmos. Knock Out was still furious about it.

 “Answer the question,” Prowl’s voice forced Knock Out to snap back into reality.

“What question?”

“I asked: That was awfully _nice_ of Megatron, wasn’t it?”

Knock Out narrowed his optics to Prowl once more. “Yes, it was.”

“So, you were _thankful_ for the opportunity to torture the human?” Prowl said. “You were looking _forward_ to that event?”

_“Yes.”_

“Because the human _deserved_ it, didn’t he?” Prowl smirked then, and Knock Out felt the bot’s EM field reaching out across the table towards him. It was, unexpectedly, filled with understanding. Knock Out knew Prowl was not particularly fond of humans. There were rumors that had spread over the mega-cycles, even within the Decepticon ranks, about the Autobots’ bizarre and sometimes strained relationship with the Earthlings, though Knock Out had never thought twice about them. Now though, he was recalling Prowl’s words to him down the brig last night, about the humans getting in the way of the war. Prowl was known for using bots to get what he wanted, and now Knock Out began to wonder what use he was to Prowl, since the mech was acknowledging their apparently shared opinion. It had to be _something,_ it was _always_ something.

“Yes, _it_ did deserve it,” Knock Out replied.

“Did Silas deactivate Breakdown?”

“No…”

“Who or what did, then?”

“It was Airachnid,” Knock Out held Prowl’s gaze for a moment before he quickly looked away again, because he was suddenly afraid of what he might see there. Prowl knew _everything_. Maybe he knew where Airachnid was? Maybe she had somehow managed to find her way to Earth and the humans were involved and Prowl was looking for recruits to take them _all_ out? _Anything_ was possible with Prowl, and _that_ was the kind of slag Knock Out was afraid he might see and get instantly sucked into, because he would honestly put his life on the line to go after Airachnid, if given the chance. Prowl had to have figured that out already. Knock Out now assumed that at some point, somewhere down the line, regardless of his sentence, Prowl would come to him with some sort of offer. Knock Out swore he could see the wheels turning in Prowl’s brain node over some plan or scheme already, and whatever it was, it would be undoubtedly irresistible. It was probably for the best that the two of them had broken it off when they had all those millennia ago, before the real war had started, because between Prowl’s ability to strategically manipulate bots mentally, and Knock Out’s ability to manipulate bots physically and emotionally, _together_ they would have been a dangerous duo, and Primus only knows how far the butterfly effect of their joint manipulations of any given Cybertronian would have reached into the future. “We’re the best of the best, you and I,” Prowl used to say, and Knock Out knew it to be true.

“Chromedome?” Knock Out heard Prowl ask.

“That’s true, it was Airachnid.”

Metalhawk had not been impressed with the way the Autobots were handling the reconstruction of their home planet, and he, like many of the other Neutrals that had since returned, had made that very well known to them. Like most Neutrals, he had escaped with barely the armor plating on his back, and then eked out an existence for the next four million mega-cycles while the Autobots and Decepticons fought over their slowly dying planet, and now that the Autobots had “won”, they seemed to be under the impression that they were heroes and that everything was going to be just fine. The Neutrals viewed their victory in a different light entirely however, and Metalhawk knew _someone_ had to step up from the Neutral side and represent them in _their_ best interests, and so he had.

Now Metalhawk found himself sitting on the Council of the first war crimes tribunal of what was quite possibly the last Decepticon Commanding Officer in existence, for none other had dared to show his faceplates on the planet since the apparent departure of Megatron and Starscream. Metalhawk held no love for the Autobots or the Decepticons, though history had shown that the latter were traditionally far more ruthless and downright evil, and he did not see anything in the report on his data pad that suggested this one-armed mech standing before him was any different. He had kept his mouth shut for the entirety of the trial thus far, though now, as he listed to the others speak, and to the bots that had come to stand in Knock Out’s defense, he scrolled through the report and shook his head at the findings. “How do you explain all this…this _corpse desecration?”_ he asked as he paused in his scrolling to look up and over to the defendant with disgust. “How are we to believe that a mech so willing to dismember and disembowel _corpses_ is worthy of _any_ affiliation _other_ than Decepticon?”

Knock Out refrained from rolling his eyes at Metalhawk, which was rather easy as he quickly found himself quite openly staring at the bot’s frame design. The mech was clearly a Seeker of some sort, but his long red wings and stabilizers jutted out from his forearms at such an awkward angle that Knock Out wondered how the mech managed to keep his balance, let alone not bump into everything and everyone at either side. Why hadn’t anyone _fixed_ that for him? “I needed the parts,” Knock Out said with a touch of irritation, for he felt he had explained this a dozen times over.

“And you assumed that picking over dead bodies for those parts was acceptable behavior?”

“I _had_ to!” Knock Out gestured to Metalhawk with his hand. “I had to keep our troops operational or Megatron would have killed me!”

“Why didn’t you just build them from scratch, or use what you had in your supply stocks?”

Knock Out vented a sigh as he pressed his fingers against his forehelm, wincing at the ache that had been steadily growing there since that morning. “Because that would have taken _forever_ and we didn’t _have_ supply stocks, not after four million mega-cycles of war. Taking parts from deactivated frames was the _only_ option! I didn’t _want_ to pick over dead bodies! I didn’t _want_ to deactivate Vehicons!” he said, now gesturing to the little cluster of Vehicons that Caps Lock had come from against one side of the wide room. “Megatron _ordered_ me to do those things! He threatened to deactivate _me_ if I didn’t! I _needed_ the parts to fix bots or half of our army would have been decommissioned! We would have lost the war!”

“Well, you lost anyway,” Metalhawk said with a scowl as he all but tossed the data pad back onto the table and somehow managed to cross his arms with those awkwardly-placed wings, like he was done with his inquiry and had made up his mind on the whole thing after just three questions.

Watching Metalhawk in that moment, Knock Out knew he had lost the Neutral’s vote, if he’d even had it to begin with. It angered him on many levels, for he had spent so many centuries as a Neutral himself, and he was under the impression that Neutrals were supposed to be just that, neutral, without a formed opinion, or at the very least willing to hear both sides. Knock Out had therefore expected more from Metalhawk, that maybe the mech should have been able to see things from a true outsider’s perspective, but it appeared he had already made up his mind based on one single charge alone. Despite Knock Out’s disappointment in that, he had to agree with Metalhawk on one point: He had most certainly lost anyway.

Another mech now shifted through the crowd and strode to the podium, and Knock Out was yet again surprised to see who it was, not that he was able to recognize him at first glance. The Vehicon flyer gave an obvious glare to his right as he adjusted the mic with his slender fingers, sending a scowl to the gathering of Vehicons that stood by the wall, Caps Lock among them, and Knock Out blinked at the sudden realization that the Vehicons had separated themselves into two groups on either side of the hangar in an obvious display of opposition to one another.

“My designation is Steve. I’m one of the Vehicons that served under Megatron, and I was stationed on the Decepticon warship Nemesis for forty vorns,” Steve said as he scanned the table of Councilmembers through his thin, red visor. “I…,” his words faltered for a moment as he looked to Knock Out, who was watching him with a raised brow. “…I just wanted to say that…that I know Knock Out deactivating some of us Vehicons for our parts was wrong,” he turned to the Council again. “The things that he did were wrong, and the way that he treated us was wrong,” again Steve paused, this time to look at the lectern as he gripped it on either side with his hands, “…but some of his wrong choices saved my life, and Spam’s, and Click Bait’s and I don’t know how many more when he took 5745’s life, and the others’, and when he had to scavenge parts from deactivated frames.” Steve turned to look directly at Metalhawk then, and his visor narrowed on the Neutral mech. “I also I wanted to say that it’s real easy for you to sit up there and judge Knock Out and us Vehicons and probably _all_ of the Decepticons when you have _no Goddamn idea_ what it was like for us because you were too busy hiding on some distant moon or whatever the _hell_ it is you Neutrals did while the rest of us were fighting for our rights. _Yes,_ he fragged up,” Steve pointed a long finger to Knock Out, though his glare remained on Metalhawk, “but we were low on parts! _Someone_ had to make those hard calls! We might have _all_ deactivated if Knock Out hadn’t done what he did! Even _you,_ Caps Lock!” Steve turned to glare at the cluster of Vehicons to his right once more. “I’m _sorry_ about your bond-mate, you _know_ I am, we _all_ are! But it was _war!_ We were all just trying to survive! And yes, it got ugly, but we _survived_ because of him!” he said as he again pointed to Knock Out. “ _You_ survived because of him, Caps Lock! You’re running around with another bot’s parts inside of you just like the rest of us! Don’t act like you aren’t! And you should be _thankful_ that you are, instead of coming up here and acting like you’re somehow _better_ than the rest of us and didn’t benefit from their deaths too! I understand how _fragged up_ that is, but we _all_ carry that burden, not just you! So does he!” Steve yelled, stabbing his finger at Knock Out a final time, though his glare never left Caps Lock and the three other Vehicons that were clustered around him. “Get the _frag_ over yourself and be thankful you’re still alive!” And with that, Steve stormed away from the podium, a wave of his anger-filled signature rippling through the crowd in his wake.

Ultra Magnus was very cognizant of Steve’s behavior from the moment the mech took the podium. He knew the Vehicon was angry, hell, they _all_ were, but Ultra Magnus had not been aware of the rift that had since grown between the small group, and he was honestly surprised that the dividing line was Knock Out. In the interest of fairness, Ultra Magnus allowed Steve to vent his frustrations, though he’d been mere nano-klicks away from interrupting him and asking him to rejoin the crowd once his vocalizer began to rise in volume and the cursing started. The Acting Commander of Cybertron was thankful when Steve finally found the wherewithal to stop himself and return to his respective grouping of Vehicons, for he did not want to be forced to silence the mech, who clearly needed to have his say.

Knock Out had stood starting at Steve in much the same fashion he had stellar-cycles ago, when Steve had led the then-still-combined group of Vehcions to his cell to ask how he was fairing. And again, he was astonished by the mech’s words and articulation, though now that was coupled with the newfound awareness that apparently some of the Vehicons were thankful for what Knock Out had done in order to keep them alive. Was that why Steve had been so adamant about checking up on him, about showing that he actually cared, because he was grateful to still function, regardless of the cost? And now, to come and speak on his behalf, to tell the Neutral off, and to confront his own Vehicon brethren? Knock Out did not think he was worthy of such defense, not after all that he had done to them, and he felt a sudden pain in his spark at the very obvious amount of survivor’s guilt that must be plaguing not only Steve, but Caps Lock and the others as well.

“Are there any other bots that wish to speak?” Ultra Magnus’s announcement seemed to clear the tension in the air of the open bay as he scanned the shifting masses that surrounded them, and he blinked as here now another surprising figure emerged from the mumbling crowd to take the podium. Ultra Magnus slowly shifted his gaze to Knock Out then, analyzing the almost-pleading look the ex-‘Con was giving the bot adjusting the mic, and he found the worry and anxiety now rolling from Knock Out’s EM field perplexing.

“My designation is Arcee. I’m an Autobot and long-time member of Team Prime,” Arcee said to the Council before her optics flicked to Knock Out and the look he was giving her that she was familiar with, a look that said, “You don’t have to do this,” but she had made up her mind the instant Ultra Magnus had announced there would be an opportunity to speak on Knock Out’s behalf. In truth, Arcee had assumed she and First Aid would be the only bots to speak for him, so she was glad that there had been others thus far. But now it was her turn, and she found herself swallowing back her nervousness as she drummed her fingers on the lectern before speaking. She certainly was not intending to reveal all, though she knew that no matter what she said, there would be consequences for her, social consequences, but so be it, she was not afraid.

“I knew Knock Out before the war,” Arcee said into the mic, and she winced a bit, as it sounded like a confession of sin. “We…we hung out in the same social circles. We were friends,” this she said to the Council, to Bumblebee and Ratchet in particular, as though she was trying to explain herself, and she let that statement hang in the air for a moment before continuing on. “It just so happened that…that we both kind of fell on hard times and…I wasn’t doing very well. He helped me out. He helped me out _a lot_ during that time. I’m not sure where I’d be if he wasn’t there for me back then,” Arcee turned to face Knock Out then, “I’d probably be dead,” and she was not aware of the looks of utter shock Bulkhead and Wheeljack were giving one another as they stood in the throng behind her.

“He was a good bot once,” Arcee continued, her faceplates now going somber as she held Knock Out’s gaze, though she did not look at him for long before she turned back to the Council. “He was a good bot, and I think he could be again, if he was given the chance. At least I _hope_ he could.”

Prowl went still the moment Arcee spoke of her pre-war dealings with Knock Out, his processor and databanks instantly kicking into overdrive as he calculated a thousand different scenarios and possibilities as to what “the same social circles” in pre-war Cybertron could possibly mean or insinuate. For all of his sudden apprehension however, he hid it quite well. “Chromedome, is this true?” he asked, his gaze never leaving Arcee.

“We didn’t cover any pre-war memories,” Chromedome replied.

“Are you _doubting_ my sincerity?” Arcee asked as she raised a brow and crossed her servos over her chest at the implication behind Prowl’s question.

Prowl set his data pad aside and crossed his servos on the tabletop as he stared at Arcee. “Would you care to elaborate a little more, then?”

“That’s all I wanna say,” Arcee said as she glared back at Prowl, though now she was beginning to doubt whether her choice of words would be more of a hindrance than a help to Knock Out.

“I’m simply asking for clarification. In what ways did he ‘help you out a lot’? I don’t think the Council quite understands what you mean by that. Please be more specific.”

Arcee shot a signature of annoyance out toward Prowl as she shrugged. “I dunno! He helped me out! We split rent on a habsuite for a while!”

“Alright. What else?” Prowl raised a brow, and his practiced, calm demeanor made Arcee’s rising ire look that much worse. “Please, continue.”

Giving a quick, desperate glance to Knock Out, but only seeing her look mirrored back at her from Knock Out’s faceplates, Arcee shook her head before turning back to the table. “He took care of me when I was sick,” she said, and the second the words left her lips, she saw it, that look of realization from Ratchet. She could see all of the pieces suddenly coming together in his mind over everything that Knock Out had told her the Medic had been able to figure out on his own. And maybe Ratchet had known what she was this whole time, but he surely had not gone so far as to realize that her and Knock Out had essentially come from the same place and had literally walked the same path for a million mega-cycles. Arcee bit the inside of her lip, returning Ratchet’s gaze with an apologetic look before she once again glared at Prowl. Screw this mech for trying to dig into her past, into _their_ past. She couldn’t believe he was willing to take such a huge risk. Then again, he didn’t know what _she_ knew. But that was fine. If he wanted to play games, she could play games. “Knock Out paid my half of the rent _more_ than once,” she continued, “he kept the stocks of Energon full when I couldn’t afford to buy any myself. And I suppose _next_ you’d like to ask me where he got all the credits to do that, _wouldn’t_ you, Officer _Prowler_?”

Prowl kept his now narrowed gaze settled on Arcee’s optics. For one nano-klick, he thought Knock Out had broken his caste’s bond, that covenant between Companions and the rest of society that was as old as the function itself. But no, that wasn’t like Knock Out, Prowl knew that. The bot kept his word, he’d taken his function and whatever honor was left in it quite seriously back then. So no, Prowl quickly surmised, it wasn’t that Knock Out had broken that pledge, to do so was prohibited and punishable by death, at least when the Functionists had been in charge. Pleasurebots didn’t kiss and tell… _except amongst their own kind, where it was perfectly legal to do so_. Prowl’s gaze shifted to Arcee’s neckline for a moment, casually as ever, then slowly flicked back to her pink and blue optics that were still narrowed at him. “You may step back, Arcee.”

Arcee saw Prowl’s gaze drop to her throat and she knew what he was envisioning there, but she found that him coming to that conclusion did not bother her in the slightest, for she was certain he would keep that information to himself out of fear of her retaliation. That was just fine by her. _“Thank you,”_ she said with a sudden smile so sickeningly sweet it made Prowl tsk with disgust as he quickly grabbed his data pad again. Turning from the podium, Arcee started back across the room, though not before she grinned to Knock Out as she passed him by, and he could not help but give a small smirk of his own in return.

Ultra Magnus, ever-observant, said nothing as he watched and listened and felt the words and tension bouncing back and forth between Prowl and Arcee. He did know what was going on there, but now was not the time to ask. “Is there anyone else who would speak on Knock Out’s behalf?” he said as he scanned the crowds a final time, and his words brought silence to the hangar again before one more bot reluctantly stepped forward.


	40. An Airing of Grievances - Part IV

All optics stared as Smokescreen moved to the podium, and Knock Out narrowed his crimson gaze to the Autobot suspiciously. There was no reason the young mech should be coming up here to speak on his behalf, he had tortured the kid, for Primus’s sake. So then _what the hell was this?_ Instantly worried that the rookie Autobot’s words would ruin any remaining chance he had at avoiding eons behind bars, Knock Out canted his head ever-so-slightly, his scowl and optics clearly reading, “Don’t frag this up for me, or _else_ …”

Smokescreen glanced around the hangar to all those gathered, his gaze coming to rest on the Council. He cleared his vocalizer, though his voice still shook when he spoke. He had practiced this speech at least fifteen times in the past deca-cycle, but he was still nervous, and it showed. “Distinguished members of the Council, my designation is Smokescreen. I’m an Autobot, a member of the Cybertron Elite Guard, a member of Team Bumblebee and Team Prime, and a loyal soldier of the Autobot cause. I fought alongside Optimus Prime in the final cycles of the Great War on Earth and Cybertron, and stood beside him during our Darkest Hour. And although Alpha Trion saw fit to designate me a guardian of one of the Omega Keys, and although the Matrix of Leadership revealed itself to me for the taking, I want to take this moment to humble myself before the Council and note that despite my past contributions to our righteous cause, and my future within the Autobot ranks, I feel that I’m currently incapable of assuming any role of responsibility. I know that I’m not ready,” he paused there, gauging the Council’s reaction. They all knew Smokescreen told the truth, for several of them had witnessed the events he spoke of. They did not need to be reminded of Smokescreen’s heroic deeds, or of his projected rise to eventual leadership. Even though it was often said in jest, the members of Team Prime did not refer to Smokescreen as “Destiny’s Childe” for nothing. They knew the bot was fated for greatness, it was only a matter of time and personal growth on his part.

Smokescreen shifted his gaze from one Councilmember to another, though he found he lingered the longest on those that had made up Team Prime as he continued. “One of the reasons that repeatedly leads me to refuse such responsibilities is that…” and here his vocalizer betrayed him for a moment and he stumbled over his words, which were so hard to say out loud after all this time. “…is that…I haven’t been entirely truthful with you all.” Smokescreen’s blue optics stared down at the lectern before he spoke again, his voice softer as a wave of guilt spread out from his signature around him.

“According to Iacon census records, my spark was cast from the last Pulse of the Well of AllSparks, its final act before going dormant at the start of the Great War. The workers at the Iacon Neomatter Facility knew the war was coming, so they took several of us sparks that were last to be harvested and interrupted the natural cycle of our protoform construction by putting us into stasis. I read all of this in texts housed in the Iacon Hall of Records,” Smokescreen said, mentioning his former duty station where he had been charged with guarding the building that housed Cybertron’s most precious manuscripts and databases. “We were supposed to insure the continuation of our race, in case the war took everyone else out,” he continued as he looked back to the Council. “Well, they changed their minds,” here Smokescreen focused his attention on Ratchet, not in an accusatory way, but because he had always wondered if the old Medic had had any say in that decision, being who he was, an Elite Class member of the Medical Sciences function. “Apparently, they got worried the facility would be destroyed, so they brought us back online and started handing us off to any Autobot or Neutral willing to take in a Sparkling, which I guess wasn’t many. I got really lucky, though,” Smokescreen smiled faintly to that. “There was this young Constructibot. She was a single mecha, but they were desperate to get rid of us, y’see, with the war and everything. It was noted in the adoption records that she’d always wanted her own Sparkling. The reports didn’t mention her designation and the adoption was anonymous, but—”

“Hang on,” Ultra Magnus suddenly interrupted, and Smokescreen blinked to the larger mech’s narrowed gaze. “Explain to me why you know what your _anonymous_ adoption records say? That data has always been sealed to the public.”

Smokescreen swallowed hard at the question, hanging his head in shame for a moment. “I admit I hacked into the Iacon Reproduction Database for her information,” he said, and then immediately looked up from the floor to Ultra Magnus once more, who was now glaring at Smokescreen’s admission to breaking the law, yet the young bot carried on. “They gave me to her, and she took me home and…she donated her CNA to me,” here he paused again, looking exceptionally worried as he now wrung his hands together. “I know the Functionists didn’t like that. I know they didn’t like diversity in a bot’s CNA code. I know it was considered selfish and wrong to want to create a bot after your own image, but she did it anyway,” Smokescreen said as he flicked his gaze from Ultra Magnus to Ratchet and then Bumblebee, now terrified that they would view him as some sort of freak anomaly of a Transformer.

The practice of CNA donation had been largely frowned upon by the Functionists and much of Cybertronian society for many centuries before the war, although the wealthy and Elite Class members had still been known to get away with it, on occasion. There had always been the long-held belief that NewSparks were hatched with everything they would ever need, because that was how Primus intended them to be. The concept of Cold Construction notwithstanding, many believed that a NewSpark’s CNA should remain untouched and unaltered, yet there were those from another school of thought who believed that a NewSpark exposed to additional CNA was given an advantage in life, as it might benefit from the possibility of additional programming, functions, and transformation sequences that another bot’s CNA had to offer. Unlike the Functionists, that group believed diversity was a strength and not a weakness. It appeared that Smokescreen’s Matron held that belief as well.

“I think she just wanted the best for me,” Smokescreen said as he cycled a vent through his intake filters, “I _know_ she wanted the best for me,” he corrected himself, even though what he said had always simply been his personal hope, and had never actually been proven. “So...so some of my CNA comes from her, from this bot whose spark was big enough to take on the challenge of a Hatchling despite the threats of war,” Smokescreen tried to raise his head high as he said that, for he was proud of his Matron, whoever she had been, but now his gaze shifted back to the floor as he raised a hand and placed it on the back of his neck as he looked suddenly concerned, “and this young mecha…she donated her CNA to me, but…so did someone else.” Finally, Smokescreen swiveled his blue optics up and over to Knock Out as he stood at his podium.

Up until that point, Knock Out was not sure where Smokescreen’s story was going, or even why the young bot had stepped out to say anything in the first place. The way the mech had been telling it, it sounded like he was recounting all of the great and noble things he had done, and then some sort of sob story about his early years, but the more Smokescreen spoke, the greater the realization and eventual sense of panic that began to rise up in Knock Out’s chassis, so that now, at Smokescreen’s last statement, Knock Out simply stared, dumbstruck by what he was hearing.

“This mech standing before you is my Sire,” Smokescreen said, and he did not look proud to say it as he then quickly turned away from Knock Out. A wave of hushed exclamations rippled over the crowd of bots that lined the walls, as well as down the table of Councilmembers. Knock Out quickly looked to the Council, and he could have sworn he saw Ultra Magnus mouth the words “Did you know about this!?” to Bumblebee and Ratchet as he momentarily covered his mic with a large hand, and both bots shrugged and violently shook their heads while replying “No!”.

Prowl was the first to speak, and he leaned forward over the table to cast a glare back and forth between Knock Out and Smokescreen, his gaze settling on the latter. “How do we know you’re telling the truth, Smokescreen? How do we know Knock Out hasn’t manipulated you into saying something so ridiculous? Did he threaten you with something?”

“No!” Smokescreen gaped at the accusation, then instantly narrowed his gaze on Prowl. “No, he didn’t! I’m telling the truth! Why would I _make up_ something like this!?”

“Prove it, then.”

Smokescreen visibly grit his denta to Prowl as he momentarily clenched his fists at his sides. He did not know much about the Security Officer, and had not had much interaction with him, but there was something about Prowl that seemed somehow insincere and untrustworthy, so to be called out on his own trustworthiness by such a bot made Smokescreen’s doorwings bristle in anger. He quickly raised a hand and pushed a panel open at the side of his chest plates, removing a flexcell photo from his subspace as he stepped to the table and handed it to Ultra Magnus, though his gaze never left Prowl’s. The mech wanted proof? He had proof. “If you would please put this onscreen, Commander.”

Ultra Magnus eyed the photo for a moment before he vented a sigh, then placed the page over the top of his data pad for it to scan. The image was projected up from the data pad onto the larger screen that hung on the wall at the far end of the hangar that was typically used for mission briefings and vehicle schematics. Every head on every bot present swiveled to look up at it.

In the grainy photograph, two bots stood close together, a small Sparkling, no older than two mega-cycles, held between them. The fembot, on the right, had broad blue shoulders with yellow and white stripes down the front of her chassis, the color palette and design identical to the one Smokescreen wore now. Every inch of her form was either dented or scuffed with missing paint flecks. Clearly, she spent her time on construction sites, a hulking bot as large as any mech. But her azure optics were soft, and her smile highlighted her feminine qualities. She looked happy in the photograph.

The bot on the left was shorter than the fem, its red armor sparkling and flawless beside the blue and yellow mecha’s. A sunburst of reflected light that had bounced off the photo lens and back onto the shining red armor when the picture was taken created a series of white and yellow crescents that cascaded across the photograph, masking most of the red bot’s face and chest. The only parts that were clearly visible were one half of the red crested helm, a pointed white audio receiver peeking out from under the plating, and one servo and hand. Painted in black lines against the red servo armor plating was a looped and crisscrossed pinstripe design with a familiar placement. The much less pointy yet still tapered dark grey fingers of the hand were offering a red toy racecar to the Sparkling that was so small it took only one of the fembot’s gigantic white hands to hold it. As with all Sparklings of that age, it had no color palette of its own, but it was smiling excitedly as it reached for the toy car.

Knock Out blinked up at the photo on the screen and felt his spark jump into his throat.

A sudden, communal “Awwww!” of cooing vocalizers from the crowd echoed off the walls of the hangar. Sparklings, real or photographed, had not been seen by any bot for nearly five million mega-cycles, but even now most bots instinctually found them adorable, the same way that humans had a penchant for their own young and big-eyed, baby animals. Prowl, on the other hand, took one look at the photo and the familiar pinstripes and glared back to Smokescreen.

“So what?” Prowl said as he then turned his glare to the Council and pointed to the screen, and he did not care what his words might imply when he said them. “That could be _any_ Sparkling. Knock Out could have Sired _hundreds_ of them, the way _he_ gets around!”

But before anyone could react to that statement, Smokescreen reached into the still-open panel of his chassis one more time. Removing an object from his subspace, he carried it to the center of the table and placed it between Prowl and Bumblebee. It was the red toy racecar.

“Holy _shit!”_ Rodimus practically laughed as he slapped a hand over his own helm and looked from the toy to Knock Out. “Is this just the craziest cycle of your _life_ or _what_?”

“Knock Out, is this true?” Ultra Magnus too now looked from the toy car to the ex-‘Con. “Is that you in the photo onscreen?”

Knock Out had been staring at the toy car as well while a hundred repressed memories were suddenly all fighting to run through his processors at the same time. He wasn’t even aware he was being asked a question until Ultra Magnus was forced to repeat it.

“Knock Out, you need to answer the question. Is that you in the photo, with the mecha?”

Knock Out snapped out of his daze, giving a startled blink to Ultra Magnus, then up at the family photo again that was displayed on the screen for seemingly all of the galaxy to gawk at. “Yes,” he finally spoke, though his voice was so soft that if the entire room hadn’t gone completely silent again, no one would have been able to hear him. “Yes, that’s me.”

“And the mecha holding the Sparkling, do you know her?”

“Yes...”

“How?”

“...We were roommates while I was studying at the IMA.”

“Did you and she jointly donate your CNA to the Sparkling shown in the photo?”

“Yes,” Knock out finally tore his gaze away from the screen and stared at his peds, looking utterly shocked.

“Did you know Smokescreen was your Childe?”

“No…I had no idea.”

 

Back on Earth, where it was now 2:00am Pacific Standard Time, Jack, Miko, Agent Fowler and June all stood hovering over Rafael, who was sitting in front of a computer in an office inside Hangar E. Rafael pushed his glasses back up against the bridge of his nose for the twelfth time that evening as he paused in his typing. Despite the fifteen-minute delay in the signal, he had managed to pick up the Cybertronian News Network via satellite (never mind the amount of hacking it took to commandeer it) two hours ago, and was pleased to find that the broadcast of the trial had its own closed captioning, only it was of course in Cybertronian. The trial was a perfect opportunity for Rafael to fine-tune his alien language skills as he now had written visual and spoken audio references at the same time, and he was instantly captivated by the differences in tenor and pitch of each bot’s vocalizer as they spoke. Actual Cybertronian was far more difficult to understand than the beeps and chirps that Bumblebee had once been forced to use to communicate, but many of those sounds were still used in the Transfomers’ speech patterns even when they had working vocalizers. Rafael had been quietly listening as he read the captions, lost in the cadences and variations of their mechanical voices that he could only compare to sounds created on his own planet: a mixture of deep, rumbling bass, fragments of reverberant noises and synthesized modulations of tone, radio static, the crashing of waves on a beach, along with the sometimes not-so-pleasant-sounds of a dial-up modem connecting to the internet. He made sure to record the entire thing, so that he could use it as research material later. _This,_ Rafael thought, is what they _ought_ to be teaching in schools: How to communicate with alien races.

His mind temporarily whisked away to another planet, Rafael had been completely startled by Miko when she showed up thirty minutes into the trial, and when she could neither read nor understand what was being shown onscreen, she demanded a translation. Rafael did his best, but he found he could not read, translate, and then speak the sentences in English without missing a few words here and there, so he’d quickly opened a word document and began typing out the translations instead, which Miko then read aloud to Jack, who had shown up shortly after Miko.

June and Agent Fowler had arrived not long after, as they’d all known the trial was taking place early that morning, and now the four of them huddled around the computer screen as Rafael continued to furiously type out the dialogue he was translating, while Jack had taken up reading the words out loud.

“’The mech standing before you is my Sire.’ Wait, _what?”_ Jack said as he blinked to the words Rafael had just written, then to Rafael himself, who had since donned a pair of headphones so that he wasn’t distracted by the others as he worked. “What does _that_ mean?” Jack asked as he tapped Rafael on the shoulder.

“Can’t talk. Have to type,” was all Rafael could reply with, his eyes wide as he tried to keep up with the translation of the dialogue.

Jack frowned, then continued to read Rafael’s transcriptions, though as he followed the script, he suddenly blinked between it and the streaming video on the screen. “No way. Knock Out is Smokescreen’s _dad!?”_

“Holy _fuck!”_ Miko exclaimed as she slapped both hands over head while staring at the screen as well.

“Miko!” June gasped beside her before scowling.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Miko said before pointing to the screen. “Oh my God, _look!_ Awww! Little _baby_ Smokescreen!? Get OUT!” she smacked Jack in the shoulder with a hand, though she could not keep her gaze off the screen as she smiled. “That’s _adorable!”_

And Agent Fowler, who had been standing silently behind the others as he listened, now blinked as well before shaking his head in disbelief. “Judge Judy ain’t got _nothin’_ on this, boy!”

 

“Chromedome,” Prowl shifted his glare to the Mnemosurgeon, who Prowl noted was still irritatingly calm, “can you confirm this?”

“No,” Chromedome shook his head, “we didn’t go back that far.” He turned to Knock Out then, lifting one side of his visor in question. “If you like, I can look now and—”

“ _No!”_ Knock Out was so quick to respond that he interrupted the mech, though Ratchet’s words quickly drew his attention back to the table.

“Knock Out, when was this photo taken?” Ratchet asked.

Knock Out glanced up at the photo once more, clearly still in disbelief as he replied. “A few cycles before she and the Sparkling left Iacon...They were supposed to go to Crystal City...The Decepticon forces were already camped outside Iacon’s walls, and she wanted to keep him safe...” Knock Out put his hand to his helm and turned to stare at the podium, because he was afraid to hold Ratchet’s gaze. “She hadn’t given him a designation yet…The toy was a parting gift,” he said as he shrugged his shoulder, “something to remember me by.”

Ratchet vented a sigh as he too now brought his hands to his own helm and rubbed his hands down his faceplates, then he looked to the younger mech, who had moved back to his podium and was now staring at the floor as well. “Smokescreen, have you always known Knock Out was your Sire?”

“No. Not until the first time I saw him on Earth, mega-cycles ago. I mean, the photo, I…it all looked so familiar,” he said, the guilt still rolling off his signature.

“So, from that point on, all this time, you knew, and you never told anyone?” Bumblebee said, confusion written all over his faceplates and signature, and when Smokescreen nodded his head, Bumblebee pressed him. “Why?”

Smokescreen cycled a deep vent and turned back to the Councilmembers, looking absolutely crestfallen. “Because you already didn’t trust me when I landed on Earth.  Because even after you all seemingly got over that, despite your friendliness, you _constantly_ berated me for being young, and inexperienced, and told me I didn’t have the capacity to make tactical decisions. If I had mentioned then that oh, _by the way_ , I have a Sire, and he’s a Decepticon, what do you _think_ would have happened?” he said, glaring to them all now at his last statement as he looked to each and every Councilmember’s face, one by one. “You would have trusted me even _less._ Hell, you might have even thrown me out, or locked me up. Or traded me over to the Decepticons for something or someone else because you thought that’s where I belonged. If I _had_ said anything, and if you _had_ in fact done any of those things because of what I’d said, I’d just like to point out that you would have _lost_ Optimus Prime that cycle the Decepticons destroyed Outpost Omega One in Jasper,” Smokescreen’s anger was obvious now, as evidenced by the increasing volume of his voice.

“Why are you telling us now?” Bumblebee asked, looking genuinely concerned for him.

Smokescreen had turned his glare to Bumblebee, but it softened immediately. He just couldn’t stay angry at him. Bumblebee wouldn’t have cared about any of this, had he spoken up sooner. Bumblebee wouldn’t have even cared if Smokescreen had said that Megatron _himself_ was his Sire. “Because I’m living proof that someone _good_ and _decent_ and _moral_ can come from someone as bad and deceitful and _treacherous_ as a Decepticon,” Smokescreen said as he pointed to Knock Out, who had slowly lifted his gaze to his apparent Childe at that.

“You think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you?” Prowl said, his own glare meeting Smokescreen’s once again as he gave a nod to Knock Out. “Kind of like your old mech over there?”

“My point isn’t to put myself up on a pedestal and say that I’m better than any bot here,” Smokescreen replied, his gaze narrowed to Prowl once more. “My _point_ is to show that despite my CNA, I’m still a good bot. I still managed to be good enough to get selected for the Cybertron Elite Guard. _Me:_ Childe of a Decepticon. I was good enough for the Matrix of Leadership to reveal itself to _me:_ Childe of a Decepticon. And d’you know who I credit all of my decency and honor and worthiness to? Him,” he raised a hand and pointed to Knock Out, “him and my Matron _and_ you, _all_ of you,” he said as he waved that same hand to those seated at the table. “And you all,” he pointed to Arcee, First Aid, Bulkhead and Wheeljack, after seeking them out in the crowd. “And Optimus Prime, and Alpha Trion, and every Autobot everywhere who ever gave me a chance, or offered me assistance, or taught me something, or was just _there_ for me when I needed guidance or a friend to confide in,” Smokescreen said as he looked to the table once more. “I am who I am because of my upbringing,” he again pointed to Knock Out, and then the photo that still glowed on the screen. “And my leadership,” then he pointed to Ultra Magnus and Bumblebee.  “And my role models,” and here he gestured to the rest of the table, though he stopped shy of Prowl before he turned to gesture to the other members of Team Prime once more. And then Smokescreen turned back around to face Knock Out again, and their optics locked on one another. “Knock Out hasn’t had good role models or leadership or _any_ of those other things. I don’t think he’s had them in a _long time_.”

Smokescreen shifted his gaze back to the table of Councilmembers. “I’m not denying he committed any of the crimes he’s been charged with, I was witness and victim to plenty of them myself. But he and I are of the same coding. Autobots, Decepticons, we were _all_ the same once. Yes, he _became_ a Decepticon, but he wasn’t back then. He wasn’t _anything, none_ of us were. And yes, some of us went down the wrong path, but those that did should be given the opportunity to try again. _This_ is the new beginning that Optimus Prime spoke of that cycle he gave himself to the Well for the sake of our planet,” Smokescreen said as he tapped a finger on the podium. “This moment, right here, it starts right here! _This_ is where the Autobots and the Decepticons set aside their differences and start over, the _right_ way, the _peaceful_ way,” he vented an exasperated sigh as he eyed those seated at the table. “So I ask that when you pass judgment on Knock Out, you do so with leniency, and when you consider his sentence, you do so with mercy and compassion. To do anything less is not the Autobot way. Thank you,” Smokescreen concluded, and with that, he stepped back into the crowd, though not before collecting the photo and toy car from the table.

The entire hangar was eerily silent for a moment, full of two-hundred-and-eighty-one bots staring wide-eyed. Somewhere in the back, someone could be heard stifling a tear. And then suddenly the entire room exploded into a cacophony of vocalizations and noise as bot turned to bot to exclaim over what they had all just heard and witnessed.

“I don’t fragging believe this,” Wheeljack muttered to Bulkhead, his servos crossed and blue optics narrowed as he watched Smokescreen shift back into the throng of bots, who were now all giving him a wide berth. And Bulkhead gave a nod to indicate he had heard what Wheeljack said, though his gaze was fixated on Smokescreen, and his EM field was quickly becoming permeated with his own feelings of guilt and sadness. Had they really been so hard on the kid when he’d first arrived? Bulkhead had never meant to be a bully, but now he certainly felt like one.

Arcee, who had been standing beside First Aid and towards the front of the group, now shook her head in amazement before leaning down to whisper to the Medic beside her as she too watched Smokescreen. “Holy slag, he _speaks_ like a true Prime. He’s been ready this whole time, he just doesn’t believe in himself enough.”

First Aid nodded to Arcee’s words, though he felt as though he was about to offline from the waves of EM fields assaulting his processor from every single bot in the place. He had been standing motionless since returning to the crowd after giving his own little speech, both his hands clenched against his chest plates as he listened to bot after bot step forward in Knock Out’s defense. He’d been silently thankful that he was not the only one to have spoken, but he had never imagined everything that would then follow, not from Arcee, not from Steve, and _certainly_ not from Smokescreen. He stared at the young Autobot from behind his visor and felt instantly guilty that the poor mech had felt the need to keep such a secret to himself for so long.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Ultra Magnus said to silence the room as he banged one mighty fist on the table in the absence of a gavel, and when all of the voices had finally settled back down to whispers, he continued. “Is there any other bot who would speak on Knock Out’s behalf?” Ultra Magnus scanned the crowd one last time, and when no more bots presented themselves, he nodded. “Knock Out, if you’ve prepared anything, you may have the final word.”

Knock Out _had_ prepared something, but suddenly none of it was coming to mind. His processor was being overwhelmed with memories and emotions he hadn’t brought forward in more than four million mega-cycles, of the blue and yellow and white-striped Constructibot and the Sparkling and how he had assumed they had both been deactivated during the war, and then the absolute horror at the realization that he’d since been treating that Sparkling like slag, called him stupid and naïve, refused to answer his questions _,_ pulled a key from his chassis, and ultimately been the one to give Megatron access to his mind to be tortured for information.

Knock Out raised his shaking hand to grip his aching helm as he shuttered his optics. ”I need a ten-klick recess,” he muttered into the mic. He did not see Ratchet lean over to Ultra Magnus to whisper into his audial, and the Acting Cybertron Commander gave a nod before speaking.

“Make it thirty.”


	41. A Vote

The hangar again exploded with the noise of over two-hundred vocalizers as Arcee led Knock Out away from the podium and through the crowd, which was more than happy to part for them as they made their way through the door and out into the hallway.

Instead of taking Knock Out back down to the brig, Arcee let him into one of the larger and now empty conference rooms halfway down the corridor, and she lingered in the doorway for a moment once Knock Out stepped inside.

**“** Are you alright?” Arcee asked, not holding back her concern and worry from her signature or faceplates. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

Knock Out quickly flicked his gaze around the room before he looked back to Arcee and shook his head at her offer. “You don’t have to stay, I just need a few klicks,” he said, and he winced as he put his hand to his forehelm. “I just need to gather my thoughts.”

“Okay,” Arcee replied, though in truth she did not want to leave him alone. She hung her head for a moment as she tried to think of something appropriate to say, in light of everything that had just been said and revealed in the hangar, but she could not find the words. “Knock on the door if you need anything, I’ll be right outside,” she said as she finally turned and shut the door behind her.

As Knock Out eyed the empty room again, a different strain of memories began to flood through his processor. How many countless briefings had he sat through in this room? He could almost picture Megatron standing in front of the now dormant screen on the wall, plotting the next attack, the next heist, the next excavation of the next relic, the next plan to finally make Cybertron his own. Dreadwing would be standing front and center, giving a solemn nod to every word that was said. Soundwave would be controlling the presentation on the viewing screen while simultaneously displaying mission-essential statistics and various situational outcomes on his visor. Breakdown and a higher-ranking Vehicon would have been standing side-by-side taking and comparing notes on data pads. Starscream would have been fashionably late, as usual. And occasionally, other Decepticons had made an appearance as well: Airachnid, Shockwave, even Orion Pax once.

Knock Out stared at the emptiness as he pictured all of them there and realized that even though _he_ had been the one to switch sides and even though _he_ was the one that was technically the “traitor”, he still felt somehow abandoned by them all, as though _they_ had left _him._ Breakdown was dead, Dreadwing was dead, Shockwave was MIA. Despite Megatron’s supposed change of spark, he had still run away like a coward, and Starscream had naturally done the same. If Megatron was so willing to admit his faults the cycle of Unicron’s defeat, then where the hell was he _now?_ Why wasn’t he here to face the music and own up to all of his oppressive dealings that he had apparently come to realize were so wrong? Of those still supposedly living, only Soundwave had a legitimate excuse for not returning. As far as Knock Out knew, the mech was still stuck in the Shadowzone with who knows what means at his disposal to escape it. He had to be deactivated by now, him and Laserbeak both, and regardless of the countless times Soundwave had thrown him under the bus and reported his many infractions to Megatron, even despite having been the one to Bridge Airachnid off the ship, Knock Out still found that he missed him.

Had they all purposefully left Knock Out here to deal with this alone, or had he brought this upon himself by being the only one willing to stick around and offer to help restore the planet?

Knock Out now concluded that this had been the biggest mistake of his life. No, taking the light from Optimus’s hand was the biggest mistake of his life. It was all so obvious now, that this was exactly what the Prime had wanted, one living, ignorant Decepticon stupid enough to present itself to the Autobots to become the proverbial whipping-bot of the entire defunct faction, a face to fit the fallen Decepticon image. The only reason Knock Out had even momentarily considered returning to reality was because Breakdown was missing from that realm with Prime, wherever it had been, but of course Breakdown was still and would probably forever be missing from reality as well. What an absolute _fool_ he had been for accepting the offer of a “second chance.”

Walking to the front of the room, as far from the door as he could get, Knock Out slumped down onto the bench integrated into the side of the wall there. Every few nano-klicks his spark felt as though it was flipping over in its chamber and he suddenly realized that his entire frame was shivering as though he was back on the outer decks of the Nemesis about to assist Starscream in melting the polar icecaps of Earth in search of Energon.

Knowing he was supposed to be reviewing his final speech but still unable to focus his mind on that task, Knock Out leaned forward and rested his helm heavily in his hand. His head was throbbing from his attempts at trying to filter the data of the trial before it hit his processor, and it concerned him that the internal procedure had become increasingly difficult in just the past cycle alone. He had not taken Chromedome’s advice to clear out any of the files still pending review, and now he could feel them all pressing up against the narrow opening of his neuropathways and fighting to break through to his processor. Shuttering his optics tightly, Knock Out cringed as a few of the files started to slip through.

He tried to keep the data entering his processor limited to the past two cycles. The guilt and embarrassment and shock of Smokescreen’s revelation hit Knock Out first, and hard, and for a moment he could not even see past those feelings, they were so overwhelming. He attempted to prevent himself from lingering on them for too long, but even trying to process the small feeling of victory at Arcee’s words were quickly drowned out by only more guilt at Steve taking the podium in his defense, the fear and shame of Pharma possibly looking for repayment, the feeling of being unworthy of First Aid’s support and kindness, and then right back to guilt and shame again as Caps Lock’s words actually rang true this time around instead of Knock Out actively refusing to listen and acknowledge them on a level beyond the fact that what the Vehicon said was one-hundred percent accurate. And then it was back to the fear of Pharma again, keeping Knock Out up all night, well after Prowl had left the brig. And hanging over all of those emotional responses was the heavy weight of his anxiety over his sentence and what that meant for the rest of his life, if he dared even call it a life.

Too late, Knock Out realized he had tried to push everything through too quickly, as now it all spun through his processor in what felt like an endless loop of guilt and shame and fear. It was suddenly _so hot,_ and he couldn’t seem to cool himself down, and the room was spinning even though his optics were shuttered and his head was throbbing and he couldn’t squeeze his helm tight enough with his fingers to make the pain stop and Optimus was watching him, like he _always did_ now, and Knock Out swore he could feel the Prime’s signature brushing up against him, and it was filled with powerful, imposing feelings of justice and vengeance, as though to imply he had Knock Out right where he’d wanted him all along. Knock Out was so caught up in his emotions and so stuck inside his own head that he did not hear his own armor plating rattling as he trembled, or the static his vocalizer was making, but as another round of nervousness and apprehension cycled through his processor, he definitely felt his tanks churning in retaliation to his heightened level of trepidation. He tried to calm himself, but the wave of dizziness and nausea easily got the better of him, and he leaned forward as he involuntarily purged whatever partially-processed Energon was left in his tank out into a small puddle between his peds.

Spitting the foul taste from his mouth, Knock Out flared all of his air intakes wide as he tried to impede the growing sense of panic that he could feel starting to creep in at the edges of his mind and spark, and that sense only became worse at the thought of having to walk out the door in fifteen klicks and convince the Autobots that he was worthy of becoming one of them, and that they should not lock him up for the next millennia.

Between him rapidly cycling air through his vents and the whirring of his internal fans, Knock Out had not heard the door open at the back of the room, nor the footsteps as they came toward him, not until the peds making them were standing right in front of him. With his hand still covering his optics, he peered through his fingers, ignoring the optic wash that spilled out when he finally lifted his shutters, and he immediately recognized First Aid’s peds, though he did not dare look up to the bot any further as the mech’s mere presence made Knock Out feel that much more embarrassed and humiliated. He shook his head and shuttered his optics again, gritting his denta as he tried to actively fight the sobs that were threatening to escape his lips, but the resulting static-laced whimper was no more dignified. He supposed that if his frame was going to force him to cry in front of any bot, it might as well be First Aid, at least the mech wouldn’t hold it against him, but that simple recognition of First Aid’s kindness only made Knock Out want to cry even harder, his thoughts cycling back to what the mech had said in his defense and knowing that he didn’t deserve any of it.

First Aid had no trouble convincing Arcee to let him into the conference room, in fact she had looked thankful he’d offered at all, but of _course_ he would, he could practically feel Knock Out’s aching signature through the wall before he entered. And First Aid was not at all surprised to find Knock Out in such a distressed state, and of course he did not blame him for it. He moved to stand before Knock Out and waited to be noticed, and there was no surprise again in the way the ex-‘Con peeked through his fingers, First Aid had seen Knock Out do that many times when he was happy or fearful or sad, he often hid his face behind a hand, like it was his last line of defense against showing any of those emotions to anyone else.

After watching Knock Out struggle to cycle air for several nano-klicks and practically drowning in the mech’s panic-laced EM field, First Aid opened a panel along the side of his own chassis to remove a piece of saturation material. Slowly, he reached out to move Knock Out’s hand away from his face with his own, and he first carefully pressed the material over Knock Out’s shuttered optics, then wiped it against his mouth before he let the woven mesh drop to the puddle of Energon on the floor, where he used his ped to rub the slick away under the material. First Aid did all of this without saying a word, but when he saw Knock Out still struggling to keep himself from vocalizing his anguish and fresh trails of optic wash start to run down his faceplates, First Aid finally spoke up, and he did his best to engulf Knock Out in a soothing signature.

“Would it be alright if I gave you a hug?” he asked, for he was not about to impose such an intimate gesture on any bot without asking. He was not expecting Knock Out to accept the offer, but when the mech nodded even while still hanging his head, First Aid gave zero indication of his surprise as he slipped his servos around Knock Out’s neck and shoulder and pressed his bent helm to his chassis. He felt Knock Out’s signature trying and failing to set up defensive responses around him even as the mech wrapped his arm around First Aid’s waist to cling to him and stifle a few more staticky sobs. Then it was only a matter of nano-klicks before First Aid felt Knock Out’s EM field shift from opposition to hesitance and then finally acceptance and even thankfulness that First Aid was there. And to that, the Medic only smiled, because he knew no Decepticon, no real, honest-to-Primus Decepticon would have _ever_ allowed an Autobot to comfort them in such a manner.

 

Fifteen klicks later, after he’d finally managed to compose himself, Knock Out stood at the podium before the table of Councilmembers alone, Chromedome having stepped back into the crowd to stand beside Rewind now that his services were no longer required. Still clinging to the lectern like it was his lifeline, Knock Out stared down at the floor, his optics wide as another brief flicker of panic crossed through his processor as he was reminded that the entire world of Cybertron and even beyond was watching and waiting for him to speak. He shuttered his optics for a moment as he tried to push those thoughts from his mind before he cycled a vent and then glanced not to the Council, but back over his shoulder and to either side before speaking.

“I’d like to ask any other Decepticon Officer, or any other _former_ Decepticon Officer in this bay to identify themselves,” Knock Out said as he scanned the crowd, his optics narrowing slightly at all of the faces staring back at him, and he was not at all surprised when no bot stepped forward or raised a hand. ”No? No other Decepticon Officers amongst you all, then. Not a _single one._ _Except me_ ,” he finally turned back to the Council at that, though he did not make eye-contact with any of them as he continued. “I’m the _only one_. I’m the _only one_ who assisted Team Prime during the cycles of the Final Battle for Cybertron. I’m the _only one_ who stuck around after Optimus Prime sacrificed himself to the Well of AllSparks for the sake of our planet and our race. And here we are, almost five stellar-cycles later, _five stellar-cycles_ of open communications to every planet within the distance of ten quantum-jumps telling _every_ bot that the war is over, come home, and I’m still the _only one,”_ Knock Out let that sink in for a moment before continuing on.

“Since my defection from the Decepticon faction, I’ve continuously provided the Autobots with information crucial to the reconstruction of our planet. I’ve marked maps of Cybertron for clandestine Decepticon laboratories, and maps of Earth for Energon mines. I’ve provided access codes to chambers and storage rooms on the Nemesis that were previously inaccessible to you all. When Commander Bumblebee was injured, I provided the medical aid necessary to keep his spark glowing until he could be brought back to the Nemesis for proper treatment,” Knock Out said, though he did hang his head a moment, refusing to look Bumblebee in the optics as he recalled that cycle, because the guilt was still there, it probably always would be, and he frowned at himself before he finally looked to the Council again. “Since my defection, the Autobots have asked me for _many_ things, and I’ve _never_ said ‘no’. I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for.” He eyed Ultra Magnus, then Ratchet and Bumblebee.

“I’ve already plead guilty. I realize that many of the crimes I’ve committed can’t be rectified, but in regard to the humans, which I know the Autobots hold in high regard, I want it noted by this Council that since returning to Earth in the past five stellar-cycles, I’ve apologized to your human allies that I had direct contact with during the war. I apologized for the actions I took against them and their planet,” he said, catching Bumblebee’s gaze for one nano-click before he looked to the podium again. “I want to take this opportunity to extend that apology to the Vehicons. I was following orders…We were all just following orders, but that doesn’t excuse anything, I know that,” Knock Out vented a heavy sigh as he raised his hand to rub at his helm. “And I know that apologies are meaningless, given the scale and severity of the war, but that’s all I have left to offer in regards to how I treated you. I’m sorry. And Smokescreen,” Knock Out winced as he said the designation aloud, and he once again hid his face behind his hand. He did not want to address the mech here and now, with the whole galaxy watching, but he knew he had to, he figure he owed the bot at least the recognition of what he had said in his defense, “Smokescreen, I don’t know what to say. I don’t think there’s anything I _can_ say. I thought you were dead,” he said as he rubbed at his forehelm with his fingers. “When I never heard back from your Matron, I thought you were both deactivated. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the slag I said and did to you.” Knock Out could not bring himself to turn and try to find Smokescreen in the crowd. Instead, despite his best efforts, he hung his head in shame and silence for a moment, because how in Primus’s name was he supposed to make all of _that_ right? It seemed an impossible task amongst all of his other wrongdoings.

Knock Out rubbed his face with his hand again as he struggled to get himself back on track to say all the things he wanted to say, then finally opened his optics to look back to the Council. “I also want to state here and now that I can’t speak for all Decepticons. I know you want me too,” he said that to Metalhawk directly. “I know you look at me standing here and that’s all you see, but I can’t speak for them all, I can only speak for myself. So I offer an apology for my part in the war, for supporting the Decepticon cause for as long as I did. It was the wrong side to choose,” he said as he glanced to Prowl then, who held his gaze before he then looked to Ratchet and Bumblebee. “Optimus Prime offered me amnesty many times. I should have listened to him. I should have listened but...I was afraid of what you would do to me if I tried to switch sides. I was afraid you wouldn’t accept me. I still am,” he said, and he flicked his gaze to the floor again. “I know many of my past actions were wrong, and I’m willing to face the consequences for those actions, but I want our planet to be rebuilt as much as the rest of you. I want to help you restore it to its former glory, before the war, before the Functionists, back to the Golden Age. All I’m asking for is a chance to make things right,” Knock Out said, venting a final sigh, and anyone within range would sense the feeling of guilt and defeat emanating from his signature. He was not sure if everything he’d said would help in any way, but he’d hit all the points he intended to make, and remained purposefully silent on others. He had not mentioned Silas once.

Ultra Magnus waited a solid five nano-clicks to be certain Knock Out had finished before he gave a nod. “We’ll reconvene once the verdict has been reached. Arcee,” his gaze found her in the crowd, “please escort Knock Out back to his cell.”

Arcee gave a nod, stepping to Knock Out as the Council all stood from the tables and turned to file through the hangar’s side door to commence their deliberation, and Knock Out needed no prompt from Arcee to start moving for the exit, the two of them parting the crowd again as they marched out of the bay doors and to the left, down the hallway to the end and then down the lift to the ship’s bottom level.

Once at the cell, Knock Out slumped down onto the recharge slab as Arcee reactivated the glow bars, the orange lasers humming back to life between them. He leaned forward with his one elbow on his knee and turned his gaze downward, his pointy fingers completely covering his face once more.

Arcee watched him for a moment; she felt somehow sorry and not sorry for him at the same time. She had told him everything would be alright, back on Earth, but now she suddenly wasn’t so sure. “Can I get you anything while you wait?” she asked, for she could sense his unease. “Some Energon, maybe?”

Knock Out only shook his head in the negative, his hand remaining over his faceplates.

“Alright,” Arcee said, and she sent him a brief sympathetic signature before she turned and started back towards the lift. “I’ll come get you when they’re through.”

“Thank you for speaking on my behalf,” Knock Out muttered from under his hand, and Arcee stopped to look back at him, even though he still refused to look at her. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” Arcee replied, looking suddenly sad as she watched him. “We were friends. I wouldn’t have made it without you, you know that.” And Arcee’s own words gave her pause. Yes, they _had_ been friends, but what were they now, if anything? She found herself wanting to ask Knock Out what _he_ thought about that himself, but she knew he had enough on his mind as it was, and she was also uncertain of her own feelings there. Yes, she’d been willing to offer him momentary comfort before, she was programmed to do that after all, the same way that he was, and she did not regret having done it, but to consider rekindling a _friendship_ after everything he’d done?

Keeping her final thoughts to herself, Arcee left the brig.

 

“Well,” Metalhawk said with a vented sigh as he stepped into the side room off of Shuttle Bay Five, “that was…unexpected.”

“Primus, poor Smokey,” said Bumblebee as he slumped into one of the chairs that lined the table in the room, looking absolutely distraught.  “He’s been carrying that around with him all these mega-cycles…”

“Figuratively _and_ literally,” said Rodimus Prime as he grabbed the chair beside Bumblebee, turned it backwards, and then dropped into it before crossing his servos over the backrest.

Bumblebee leaned his elbows on the tabletop as he gripped his head with both hands. The trial had not gone as he expected, at all. Then again, he’d tried his best not to have any expectations, but he was certainly not prepared for anything that had been revealed. “I can’t believe he never told us,” he lamented before looking to Ratchet, who was now taking a seat across from him. “Were we _that_ rough with Smokescreen when he came onboard?”

“Of course not,” Ratchet scoffed as he lowered himself into a chair, “his mind is still young, he takes everything too personally.” Yet although those were the words he said out loud, inwardly Ratchet was just as worried about the fact that the mech had kept such a secret for so long.

Prowl vented a sigh as he too settled into a chair, giving the old Medic a look of annoyance as he spoke. “Ratchet, can you run Smokescreen’s CNA against Knock Out’s and see if this is all really true?” to which Ratchet muttered as he set about scrolling through the data pad he’d carried into the room with him, to fulfill Prowl’s request, and Prowl’s final mumble of, “Not that it even _matters,”_ did not go unnoticed by the Medic.

Ultra Magnus and Ironhide entered the room shortly thereafter to take the remaining seats at the table, and every mech fell silent for a moment as all of them reviewed the information on the data pads before them. All except Rodimus, of course, who instead used the data pad to check his external comm inbox for messages.

“Well?” Prowl finally asked Ratchet after five klicks of silence, which he’d surmised was _plenty_ of time for the information to be obtained.

“Thirteen out of fifteen CNA markers match,” Ratchet said, and he shuttered his optics as he rubbed a hand over his faceplates, like revealing the data pained him. “It’s him.”

Blinking up from his own data pad, Rodimus raised both brows and laughed. “Hah! Knock Out, you _are_ the father!”

“Hey, I used ta watch that show on Earth, too!” Ironhide smiled to Rodimus at the familiar phrasing.

“Wasn’t it _great?”_

“Hell yeah.”

“Can we _please_ remain focused on the task at hand?” Ultra Magnus said as he looked up from his data pad and glared between Rodimus and Ironhide while Ratchet and Prowl rolled their optics at the pair.

“Sorry, Mags,” Rodimus raised both hands up in defense as he smirked, then glanced around to the others. “So, does this mean we charge him back pay on Childe support?”

_“Hot Rod,”_ Ratchet began, sending a scathing look across the table to him.

“Okayokayokay, I’m _done,_ you don’t have to get personal about it,” Rodimus narrowed his optics to the Medic before huffing a vented sigh as he finally pulled up the file on the hearing. “What now, then? Does this have any effect on Knock Out’s sentencing?”

“No, of _course_ not,” Prowl scoffed. “You think we should _alter_ Knock Out’s sentence based on his Childe’s good deeds? That’s not how the law works.”

“Precisely,” said Ultra Magnus, nodding in agreement with Prowl.

“I don’t think Rodimus is saying we ought to alter Knock Out’s sentence,” said Bumblebee as he looked between Prowl and Ultra Magnus, “but in terms of him becoming an Autobot once his sentence is up, I believe it _should_ matter there. We all know Knock Out was Neutral for centuries before he chose a side. I’m sure he didn’t raise Smokey in a ‘broken home’. Like Smokey said himself, isn’t he living proof that _something_ was done right? Knock Out’s not your average Decepticon, not by a long shot.”

“I think the Childe has an attitude problem,” said Metalhawk as he laced his fingers together on the table.

“An unfortunate trait passed down through his genetic coding, perhaps,” Prowl muttered.

“Look,” said Rodimus as he rested his chin on the servo he had crossed over the back of the chair, and he gestured to Prowl and Metalhawk with his free hand, “regardless of that, Smokescreen _is_ kinda right. I mean, the kid was offered the Matrix, the Matrix _chose_ him, despite his upbringing,” and Rodimus did not hide his jealously of that fact from his EM field very well as he spoke, though he carried on. ”Would the Matrix _really_ have chosen someone with ‘Con coding as its next bearer? I mean, c’mon.”

_“'Con coding’?”_ Ratchet blinked to Rodimus like the mech was kidding. “That’s not how it works. That’s now how _any_ of it works.”

“Well, _you_ know what I mean.”

“I think Knock Out made his own valid points back there,” Bumblebee said as he gave an upnod towards the door and the shuttle bay beyond. “He’s the only Decepticon Officer that’s presented themselves and assisted us in our rebuilding efforts. We’ve had the alert beacons running for five stellar-cycles and so far, the only bots risking it back here have been us and the Neutrals,” he nodded to Metalhawk in recognition of that, and the Seeker returned the gesture. “Over two-hundred Neutrals and not a single Decepticon, with the exception of the Vehicons that were here to begin with. I think that’s another point that proves Knock Out’s commitment to the cause. He’s been here since the end _and_ the start of the new beginning, even if he’s had to go it alone.”

“Oh, there are Decepticons out there, hiding on this planet, or otherwise,” Ultra Magnus said as he tapped a massive finger on the screen of his data pad and frowned. “They’re just watching and waiting to see how this will all play out. Our ‘court room’ is being live-streamed across the galaxy, you think they’re not all waiting to see what the Autobots and Neutrals decide to do with Decepticon Officers when they _willingly_ turn themselves in?” He glanced to Prowl. “We’ll have to be careful about how and where we incarcerate Knock Out. They may attempt to either break him out, or break _in_ to deactivate him for turning traitor. We should be ready for retaliation.”

“I’m already on it,” said Prowl as he eyed his data pad once more.

“I want him held on Earth at Unit E,” Ratchet finally spoke up, and he glared to all of the surprised looks he was getting from his statement, for they had all assumed the Medic would be ready to get rid of Knock Out by now. “What? You’re worried the Decepticons will try to break him out? Keep him on Earth, then. Since Megatron’s attack on New York, the humans have upped their defense capabilities, and those planetary defense systems are certainly better that what Cybertron has right now. The humans can monitor the skies _for_ us, they already are. We need to use every resource available.”

“One count of Voluntary Mechslaughter carries a sentence of up to a vorn in prison,” said Metalhawk as he skimmed through his data pad, then looked to Ratchet. “The ‘Con plead guilty to _seven counts,_ and that’s _just_ on that charge alone. Are you really planning on sticking around Earth for six-hundred-and-two of their ‘years’ and then some?”

“Nobody said we were giving him the maximum sentence on every count,” Ratchet countered.

“Well, that’s what I think he should be given,” said Metalhawk. “Are you telling me the Vehicons’ lives aren’t worth even a vorn apiece?”

“I’m not _telling_ you anything,” Ratchet said, his optics narrowing slightly. “I’m _saying_ that his sentence needs to be decided by this group _jointly,”_ he looked to Ultra Magnus then. “What do _you_ think, Magnus?”

“His list of crimes is extensive,” Ultra Magnus shook his head as he reviewed his notes. “I realize that in the most recent stellar-cycles Knock Out has been an asset, but—”

“He saved my _life_ ,” Bumblebee interrupted as he sent a small glare Ultra Magnus’s way. “ _And_ First Aid’s! Is that all the recognition he gets for that? Being ‘an asset’?”

“He’s also _taken_ lives,” said Metalhawk.

“Ain’t we all?” Ironhide chimed in then, raising a brow to the Neutral.

“Ain’t YOU all,” Metalhawk said as he glared. “This was _your war,_ not _ours._ _My_ people didn’t go around killing whomever, whenever we felt it was ‘necessary’. The mech is twisted. He didn’t even care enough about his own people to save them. He was killing them for their servos and fuel pumps. And what about the corpse-raiding? He was picking over deactivated frames. What kind of bot _does_ that? He’s a psycho.”

“A _desperate_ psycho,” Ratchet said with a shrug as he eyed his data pad once more.

“Do we have to call names? _Really?”_ Bumblebee said as he glared to Metalhawk and Ratchet.

“The torture of the human concerns me,” said Ultra Magnus as he viewed the image of Silas on his screen. “Knock Out clearly enjoyed tormenting Silas a little _too_ much, and that does _not_ speak well for his sanity.”

“Hey, I agree,” Ironhide said as he shrugged his bulky shoulders, “but I think we can _all_ relate in wantin’ ta get revenge on someone fer harmin’ those we care about deeply. _Can’t_ we?” he asked, eyeing them all, though he made a point to land his gaze on Metalhawk last. “Or do you Neutrals always let everyone else walk all over ya even when they’re rippin’ yer buddies apart?”

“Ironhide,” Bumblebee narrowed his optics to the big-shouldered mech in warning. Primus, why did he feel like he was working with a group of Sparklings?

“That’s fine, Bumblebee, I never expected to be welcomed at the table by everyone, despite the fact that my people deserve a place here,” Metalhawk said to Bumblebee before he glared to Ironhide. “It is, after all, our planet too.”

“And we’re thankful to have you all returning,” said Ultra Magnus, his optics flicking back and forth between Metalhawk and Ironhide behind his visor. “It will take all hands on deck to get Cybertron restored, and working together is out greatest asset to achieving that goal.”

Bumblebee nodded to that along with the others, though in his mind he was kicking himself for not being as skilled at diplomacy as Ultra Magnus clearly was. He vented a sigh as he tried to refocus them all on the reason they were sitting at the table to begin with. “Knock Out joined us instead of taking off with the other Decepticons. I believe that he wants to change.”

Prowl grumbled, his optics still on his data pad as he scrolled through the screens. “He didn’t _join_ us, Bumblebee, he surrendered, there’s a difference.”

“Whichever way you wanna look at it, he deserves a second chance. _Optimus_ was always willing to give him a chance, and I think we should too.”

“So, we let him live?” Prowl said as he finally looked up, one brow raised, and it was hard to tell if he was joking or not.

“Of _course_ we let him live!” Ratchet scowled to Prowl beside him as he set his data pad down and crossed his servos over his chest. “The death penalty was never on the table! Primus, if we do that, _none_ of the other Decepticons will return out of fear they’ll get the same treatment.”

“You say that like it’s a _bad_ thing,” Prowl smirked.

“Now, now, Prowl,” Rodimus shook a finger to the cop, “Prime said, ‘’’Til All Are One’, and that included the ‘Cons. We can’t keep them from coming back, if we do, it’s back to war all over again and quite frankly, I am _not_ in the mood. Can’t we just lock Mr. Saws-For-Hands up for a few vorns and call it good?”

“If we imprison him for too long, no Decepticon is going to attempt to come back here if they think all that’s waiting for them is centuries behind glow bars for their part in the war,” said Bumblebee.

“Listen, do we _really want_ _them to come back?”_ Prowl repeated as he glanced to the other six mechs.

“Bumblebee is right,” Ultra Magnus said as he looked to Prowl as well. “We need to consider the diplomatic ramifications of whatever Knock Out’s sentence entails.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Metalhawk, his optics narrowed at the rest of them now. “It shouldn’t matter who the mech _is_ , what matters are his _crimes!”_

“Life ain’t always so black an’ white, buddy,” said Ironhide as he shrugged to the Seeker. “It don’t even matter that the ‘Cons might consider Knock Out a traitor now, howzit gonna look ta them if we lock ‘im up fer ages when he was _willin’_ ta help? Any ‘Con that was thinkin’ about comin’ back here to rebuild is gonna change their minds, they’ll regroup, an’ it’ll be World War Two…or maybe it would technically be Three. I’d have ta think about that a klick.”

Rodimus turned his cheek against his servo so that he could look to Metalhawk on his right. “You think _this_ is bad? Wait until Starscream tries to come back.”

“Or Megatron,” Ratchet muttered.

“Don’t even say that,” Rodimus quickly turned to point a finger at Ratchet. “I can’t even deal with that thought right now.”

“Listen, Metalhawk,” Prowl eyed the mech, “I agree with you that Knock Out deserves to be imprisoned, no one is taking that off the table here, but I also agree and understand that what happens here will set a precedent for every other Decepticon, Officer or not, that’s willing to join us. If they _must_ be allowed to come back,” Prowl rolled his optics, though that was done mostly to piss Bumblebee off, because Prowl knew, deep down in his spark, that as much as he hated it, the Decepticons needed to be reintegrated back into society if they wanted to avoid another war, “then we need to be _very careful_ with how we handle this situation, with what sort of restitution Knock Out pays, and how we enforce it. This matter could become case law for the _next_ four million mega-cycles. We need to set an example with this one,” he said as he looked between them all. “A fair but _appropriate_ example.”

“What are you thinking, then?” asked Metalhawk, and he watched as Prowl skimmed the data pad once more before shrugging.

“All things considered? Ten vorns.”

“No,” Ratchet shook his head, “this sentence needs to be a balance of punitive _and_ rehabilitative measures. Can we really in good conscience lock him up for _ten vorns?_ His good deeds need to count for _something._ ”

“I agree that seems a bit much, and I agree his sentence should be more than simple incarceration. I say seven vorns, with the possibility of parole after three,” said Ultra Magnus.

Ratchet shook his head again. “Five vorns and parole after two as long he complies with the _rest_ of his sentence.”

“’The rest’ being what?” said Metalhawk, looking doubtful.

“I’m open to ideas. He worked closely with Megatron for centuries, he has intimate knowledge of Decepticon operational procedures and methodologies that I’m sure will prove useful many times over in the future, just like they have already. We can use him as a consultant when needed. He wants to help?” Ratchet said as he shrugged, “Tack on some community service.”

“…Maybe some sort of work-release program?” Bumblebee offered, looking to Ratchet hopefully.

“Doing what? Not practicing medicine, that’s for sure,” Prowl scoffed at Bumblebee’s idea before looking to Ratchet as well. “You want five vorns and parole after two, fine, but I want him barred from the Medic’s Licensing Board. For life.”

_“Life?_ That seems excessive,” Ratchet raised a brow to Prowl at that.

“Four million mega-cycles, then. The same amount of time that he was practicing illegally.”

“Make it two million mega-cycles,” said Ratchet. “The chances of him even attempting to become licensed at this rate are slim-to-none anyway. He would still have to complete his schooling and pass the board exams before he could obtain the license. He seemed apprehensive about that even before the trial.”

“ _Fine,_ two million,” Prowl muttered. “It’s not like anyone is ever going to trust him as a Medic anyway.”

“We can’t take away his _function,”_ Bumblebee said with a glare.

_“What_ function? He’s _not_ a Medic,” Prowl returned Bumblebee’s look, missing the silent stare that Ratchet was now giving him at his words, and whatever insinuations might be behind them.

The seven mechs deliberated for another two hours over the sentence that would be imposed. Ultra Magnus, Prowl and Metalhawk continually pushed for more restrictions while Ratchet, Ironhide and Bumblebee insisted on a more holistic approach. And Rodimus Prime, as always, appeared indifferent, and contributed very little to the discussion. But when an agreement was finally reached, and the matter of Knock Out’s future affiliation came up for consideration, Rodimus was the first to cast his vote around the table.

“I vote ‘Yea’,” said Rodimus with a shrug, then he nodded to Bumblebee. “S’like you said, Prime woulda given him a second chance. We should be like Prime.”

“I also vote ‘Yea’,” Bumblebee said, returning the nod, and had nothing else to add, because Rodimus had taken the words right out of his mouth.

“Nay,” Ultra Magnus shook his head as he eyed his data pad one more time. “I think he’s too far gone. He won’t be able to maintain the proper Autobot code of conduct.”

“Nay,” said Metalhawk as he nodded to Ultra Magnus in agreement. “Far be it from me, a Neutral, to vote on whether a mech is worthy of becoming one of your own, for I can hardly say I agree with your ‘code of conduct’. However, I know a bad mech when I see one, and I agree, he’s too far gone, regardless of his faction.”

Ironhide shook his head as he shifted his optics between Metalhawk and Ultra Magnus. “Yea. He ain’t Starscream or Megatron or any o’ them DJD punks. He’s already saved Autobot lives. He deserves a chance.”

“Yea,” said Ratchet, though he kept his gaze on the table before him as he spoke, as though his mind was somewhere else, and he did not give a reason for his answer.

With four Yeas and two Nays, the final vote landed on Prowl, Knock Out’s fate with the Autobots now resting comfortably in the Police Officer’s hands, right where he’d wanted it to be. With a Nay keeping Knock Out from the Autobot ranks, and a Yea fulfilling the two-thirds majority to allow him in, Prowl drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table, while the other flicked through the screens of information on his data pad. He mulled the decision over in silence, clearly running statistics and tabulating the results that each answer would entail before he finally raised his head to look to the others, and spoke.


	42. A Verdict

Knock Out stood before the Council a final time, unable to look at any bot sitting at the table, let alone anyone in the crowd around him. He’d spent the past three hours in his cell trying to convince himself that whatever his sentence and the Council’s vote amounted to, it wouldn’t matter. Regardless of the amount of time he would be serving, regardless of whether or not they would allow him to become and Autobot after the fact, it didn’t matter. If they accepted him, fine. If they didn’t, fine. He would serve his sentence the way _he_ wanted, and then he would move on. He realized that his original idea of remaining on Cybertron was probably no longer feasible, as much as he said he wanted to help rebuild it. Knock Out could not imagine his presence would be welcomed by many bots now, not when his crimes were and would forever be public knowledge. No, Autobot or not, he would leave Cybertron, find someplace else to live. Maybe Earth. Yes, he detested the humans, but he knew he could still eke out an existence there, even without a T-cog. Bots had been known to do that before, and maybe he could make it work as well. Maybe if he was lucky, he could get ahold of Thundercracker, reveal his true function and just…hope for the best.

And yet, despite all his efforts to force himself to believe everything would be fine, Knock Out still clung to the podium like it was the only thing keeping him upright, and even though he was doing his best to hide his genuine fear of what was to come, his frame kept sending little shivers down his spinal struts, and he was certain the cambots surrounding him were picking up every tremor of armor plating. But finally, after what felt like hours of Knock Out standing there in silence, Ultra Magnus looked up from his data pad, adjusted his mic at the table, and addressed the room.

“Cybertronian sentencing guidelines dictate a four-fold path: Retribution, deterrence, social defense, and rehabilitation. In remaining consistent with this path, and for the continued safety of the Cybertronian community, the Council has determined that your sentence, Knock Out of Esserlon, is as follows: In the interests of retribution and social defense, five vorns in prison, with the possibility of parole in two vorns. In the interests of social defense and deterrence, the relinquishment of all credits and valuable assets, and upon your release from prison, ten additional vorns of continued I/D Chip and GPS monitoring. In addition to this, you are hereby barred from the Medic’s Licensing Board for two million mega-cycles. In the interest of social defense and rehabilitation, and in the interests of your desire to contribute to the rebuilding of the planet Cybertron, you may be authorized, on the basis of good behavior, to participate in a work release program during your incarceration. Also in the interest of rehabilitation, you will be required, as circumstances allow, to attend the following programs as they become available: Anger management, substance abuse counseling, and cognitive behavioral therapy,” Ultra Magnus looked up from his data pad to Knock Out then, though the other mech’s gaze was focused on the podium before him. “That being said, in recognition of your contributions to the Autobot cause, your significant assistance during the final battle for Cybertron, and in acknowledgement of the Autobot lives you helped save, even when it was a detriment to your own safety, upon completion of your sentencing in its entirety, without incident and with good behavior, and upon successfully passing an accredited course on the Autobot Code, you _will_ be granted the right to wear the Autobrand,” Ultra Magnus concluded before he set his data pad on the table. “Let it also be noted that your current time served of five stellar-cycles will count towards your sentence. Do you have any questions?” he asked, trying, again, to meet Knock Out’s gaze.

Knock Out had heard every word Ultra Magnus had spoken, though he had kept his responses to the verdict as shielded and hidden as possible. Five vorns? He had honestly expected more, that was a drop in the bucket for beings that lived millions of mega-cycles. But that small victory was quite easily overshadowed by the remaining penalties and sanctions being forced upon him. He had expected fines, he had expected the continual monitoring through the I/D Chip, but to be barred from the Medic’s Licensing Board for two million mega-cycles? That hurt, it hurt a lot. Would he even be _alive_ in two million mega-cycles, or hell, even one? Then again, he’d been looking for an excuse not to take the exams, so that he would not fail so miserably in front of First Aid and Ratchet. He had the decent excuse he’d wanted now, but it still hurt. And what did a work release program even mean if they were basically never going to allow him to become a Medic in the first place? Did it mean sorting Energon crystals for the next four-hundred-and-fifteen mega-cycles? Did it mean breaking rocks in a mine with the Vehicons? Did it mean forgetting his medical training entirely and falling back to his default function?

And _therapy!?_ How _very_ Autobot. Knock Out was unaware that his optics were slowly narrowing as he reran Ultra Magnus’s statement through his processor. _“Upon completion of your sentencing in its entirety, without incident and with good behavior”. That_ was where the life sentence was then, hidden among the words. What Autobot therapist would ever sign off on such a lengthy list of court-mandated counseling for a Decepticon as “complete”? How would the term “incident” be defined, and which one of them would be the judge as to whether his behavior was “good” or not? The “right” to wear the Autobrand suddenly seemed pointless. Well then, that was fine. He’d simply take away their opportunity to make those calls.

“No questions, but I have a request,” Knock Out said as he finally looked to Ultra Magnus, and he was very careful not to let his gaze slip to Bumblebee as he continued, for he did not want to see the look on the mech’s face when he spoke. “As I’ve plead guilty, I’d like to invoke my right to serve my sentence under spark extraction.”

“Your request is denied,” Prowl spoke before Ultra Magnus could even open his mouth to reply, and he smirked to Knock Out as the bot turned his glare to him. “The People v. Screwloose: ‘A defendant relinquishes the right to serve their sentence via spark extraction when a plea bargain has been entered and agreed upon.’ Anything else?” he asked after quoting a piece of caselaw that Knock Out apparently had no idea existed.

Frag. _Frag._ Now Knock Out had one-hundred-and-sixty-six mega-cycles to completely ruin his chances at parole, to risk any “incidents” that would most certainly occur (Pharma and all _that_ might entail came to mind), and to surely be found by any number of Autobots to have less than “good behavior”. It was a setup, the entire thing was a setup for him to fail miserably, and it had Prowl’s signature written all over it. Knock Out ground his denta together before pulling his gaze away from Prowl and answering his question. “No.”

“Then this matter is now closed,” said Ultra Magnus before he looked to the crowd. “Arcee, please return Knock Out to his cell.”

Arcee again moved to collect Knock Out and escort him through the crowd and out into the hallway, the bay door already closed behind them when Ultra Magnus spoke once more. They did not hear his words.

“Smokescreen of Iacon, please approach the Council.”

 

It did not occur to Knock Out until he was back in the cell that it was entirely possible the Council intended him to serve his sentence _there_ , in _that_ cell, on the Nemesis, for five vorns, with Pharma working just two levels above him. The panic that possibility induced within him caused Knock Out to rush to the glow bars just as Arcee was steps away from getting on the lift, so that he could yell down the hall to her and beg her to find out where they intended to incarcerate him. Arcee of course promised that she would, and she quickly left to do so, leaving Knock Out once again alone in the brig.

Sitting down on the recharge slab and burying his face in his hand once more, Knock Out tried to shove the idea of being imprisoned on the Nemesis out of his mind and tried to think of something, _anything_ pleasant to keep his thoughts from spinning out of control again. But all of his pleasant memories were of things and places and bots that he no longer had in his life, and that only filled him with sadness. And since he’d already embarrassed himself enough with emotions today, he put all his efforts into shoving those feelings aside. On that note, he realized he’d never be able to look First Aid in the optics again. And then his thoughts began to race anyway, and he forced himself to stand up so that he could try to distract himself with movement as he walked the length of the cell and cycled air through his vents and told himself to calm the hell down.

Knock Out was not sure how long he did this, he forgot to check his chronometer when he started, but he froze in place when he heard footsteps coming down the hallway and quickly leaned against the bars to see if it was Arcee returning, or Pharma looking to collect. It was neither.

Smokescreen, followed by the towering frame of Ultra Magnus, walked down the rows of empty cell units until Ultra Magnus told him to stop at the cell opposite Knock Out’s. It was then that Knock Out realized the younger mech was in stasis cuffs, though Ultra Magnus removed them before nodding to Smokescreen to step into the cell, which he did without a word. Ultra Magnus, silent himself, activated the orange glow bars to lock Smokescreen inside, then started back down the hallway.

“What the—” Knock Out began, his optics wide at the scene before he raced to the end of his own cell to glare after Ultra Magnus and flare a signature of anger at the mech. “Is this some kind of _joke!_? Hey! I’m _talking_ to you!” he yelled after him, but Ultra Magnus completely ignored his shouts and was soon on the lift and out of sight.

Now hanging on one of the bars with his hand, Knock Out blinked at the empty hallway before gaping back to Smokescreen across from him, unsure of whether he should be angry or fearful or both at whatever was taking place here. ”Please don’t tell me they put you in here because they finally know your… _heritage?”_ he asked, unaware that his EM field was now projecting worry.

“No,” Smokescreen shook his head, only daring to give Knock Out a small glance before he slumped onto the recharge slab in the cell. “They put me in here because I admitted to hacking the Iacon Reproduction Database, in open court, in front the Council,” he paused then, venting a sigh before he cringed and slapped both hands over his forehelm. “I should have left that part out, but in the spirit of honesty, I thought I should tell the whole truth…Maybe that was stupid.”

Knock Out could not believe the Council would be so strict to their own kind. Then again, the Council was led by Ultra Magnus, so never mind, yes, he _could_ believe that. ”Will they put you on trial too, now?”

“Nah, since they were all there already, they did ‘a quickie’,” Smokescreen removed his hands from his helm to make little finger quotes in the air, “and sentenced me to a cycle down here and then five stellar-cycles of community service. I think they were just doing it for show,” he crossed his servos and pouted at the floor. “Ultra Magnus and his big stupid book of laws,” he muttered, though he was just as quick to roll his optics at himself and vent another sigh. “I shouldn’t say that. We all have to be held accountable for our actions, no matter how long ago they happened.” And he found the courage then to give a very pointed look to Knock Out.

Noting the look but refusing to comment on it, Knock Out stuck to the topic at hand. “You were smart not to say anything to anyone about…where you came from. Primus, if Megatron had ever found out…” he shook his head as he gave a blank stare at his peds as suddenly all the horrific possibilities that knowledge could have led to flashed through his mind. “He would have captured you, and then he would have used you against me every time he wanted to—”

“Yeah, ‘cause this is all about _you_ , right?” Smokescreen snapped back at him, his angry signature suddenly greeting Knock Out in his cell.

“That’s _not_ what I mean,” Knock Out glared back up to Smokescreen and sent his own irritated signature right back. “He would have made you his pawn like he did everyone else. He would have found a way to use us _against_ each other for his own personal gain!”

“That only would have worked if we actually gave a slag about each other’s well-being.”

“ _I_ would have given a slag!”

_“Would_ you? ‘Cause I seem to remember you watching Megatron _mind-frag_ me and then he ordered you to use the Cortical Psychic Patch to _torture_ _me_ after removing that Omega Key from my chassis!”

“I’m _sorry!”_ Knock Out said, though he was now so angry at being yelled at that the apology was lost in translation. “I’m _sorry, okay!?_ And for the record, I _didn’t_ torture you once Megatron left the Medbay, as I’m _sure_ you recall!”

“Only because I managed to break free and escape!” Smokescreen yelled back, now standing again to grab the cell bars in both hands.

“I wouldn’t have done it anyway!” Knock Out threw his hand into the air.

“Oh, yeah _right!"_

“I didn’t _want_ to torture you!” Knock Out gestured to Smokescreen. “Or do you _not_ remember me trying to get out of it before Megatron left the Medbay? And remember how I _didn’t_ cut you open with my saw and used the Phase Shifter to get the key _instead?”_

“Wow, gee, _thanks!_ Such favors!” Smokescreen said sarcastically. “And what if I had told you _then,_ after Megatron had left? What if I’d told you then and there the truth about who I was? Would you have believed me?”

That caused Knock Out to pause, and he found himself forced to look away again as his shoulders and armor plating wilted. Would he have believed Smokescreen then? Probably not. He probably would have assumed it was some Autobot trick to try and get him to let his guard down. He did not want to say that out loud, though. ”I—I don’t know…”

“Or what if I had told you any of the _dozens_ of times Optimus tried to change your mind and get you to join our side!? Would knowing have made it any different!?” Smokescreen was still shouting, despite Knock Out’s clear indication of backing down.

“I don’t know,” Knock Out repeated, and he sat back down on the recharge slab to hide his face in his palm once more. It was too much to think about, all of those possibilities, and he did not want to process them anymore. “I don’t know, Smokescreen. I’m sorry. Frag, I’m _so_ sorry.”

Smokescreen glared across to the other cell and Knock Out’s bent helm for a few more nano-klicks before he pushed away from the bars and sat down on his slab as well, though he swung his peds over to the other side so that his back was to Knock Out so that he could ignore him.

The two mechs sat in complete silence for nearly two hours, and Knock Out could feel Smokescreen’s anger flaring almost the entire time. He couldn’t blame the mech for that at all, though he did not understand why, if he was so angry, Smokescreen had come to his defense in front of the Council. He did not understand why the mech hadn’t kept his secret to himself for the rest of his cycles and saved himself the embarrassment of the entire galaxy knowing the truth. Knock Out could not decide if Smokescreen was impressively brave or just utterly ignorant of how society would see him now. The kid had screwed himself, royally. Did he even realize that? Did he realize that all of his past and future achievements would likely forever be tarnished by the shadow his coding now cast over them?

As before when he’d been stuck in the swarm of his own thoughts, Knock Out had not heard the sounds around him, of Smokescreen shifting on the slab in his cell, though Knock Out lifted the shutters on his optics and blinked when the red toy racecar hit his ped after it came rolling through the glow bars. He stared at it for several nano-klicks before he finally vented a sigh, like he was giving in to something as he leaned forward to pick the toy up and hold it in his palm before finally breaking the silence between them.

“Rollback…Your Matron’s designation was Rollback.”

Being angry at Knock Out was nothing new to Smokescreen. He had spent many, _many_ cycles of his life being absolutely livid at the mech for so many reasons, but from the moment Knock Out had declared he was joining “the winning team”, Smokescreen’s curiosity had gotten the better of him. Despite all that anger, he’d found he was desperate for answers to the many questions he had about his past, for millions of mega-cycles in stasis had left much of his memory in shambles. _That_ was why Smokescreen kept trying, regardless of his anger, and regardless of Knock Out’s tendency to shut him down, or to bristle at his questions. So when the ex-‘Con finally offered even that one little piece of information, Smokescreen’s spark skipped a pulse, his anger completely forgotten as he stared across to the other cell.

“What was she like?” Smokescreen asked, his blue optics wide, though his spark sunk a bit at the blink of surprise Knock Out then gave him.

“You don’t remember?” Knock Out said as he raised a brow. “Weren’t you with her? Didn’t you both make it to Crystal City? She was supposed to send me an external message when you arrived, but she never did. What happened?”

“I…I’m not really sure,” Smokescreen said, and he could not help the wave of embarrassment that seeped into his signature as he turned his gaze down to his peds. “I don’t really remember a whole lot from back then. I don’t remember seeing Crystal City, if we even made it at all. I think she might have turned us back halfway there? I dunno. I don’t have many memories of her. When you get put into stasis for a long time, it frags with your memory banks, y’know?” he shifted his gaze up to Knock Out then, his look almost pleading as he repeated the question. “Can you tell me what she was like?”

Knock Out vented a sigh as he eyed Smokescreen for a moment, then the tiny car in his hand. He couldn’t blame the younger mech for wanting answers, but he was highly hesitant to give them, for fear Smokescreen might then run and repeat it all to any Autobot that would listen. Then again, probably none of them would. At this rate, Smokescreen would be lucky if they didn’t all ostracize him, and Knock Out was surprised how sad that suddenly made him. “She was kind,” he finally said, and he shrugged his shoulder, “once you got through her rough exterior. Kind, but not so kind that she ever let anyone take advantage of her for it. I liked her for that,” he shrugged again as he set the toy car on the berth beside him.

“How did you meet her?”

“I answered her want ad for a roommate. Somehow our personalities clicked.”

“How long did you live together?”

“A long time,” said Knock Out as he looked to Smokescreen once more, “hundreds of mega-cycles, while I was attending the IMA.”

Smokescreen was hanging onto Knock Out’s every word, though now at his next question, he pulled his gaze away, because while he wanted the true answer, he was not sure how appropriate it was to ask. “But you guys…you never…? I mean, were you like… _together_ together?”

It took Knock Out a moment to realize what Smokescreen was insinuating, though once he did, he shook his head and could not help but smirk a bit to the question, because had Rollback been there, she would have most certainly smacked Smokescreen upside the head. “No, it wasn’t like _that_ at all. She uhh, she didn’t _like_ mechs. Understand?”

_“Oh,”_ said Smokescreen, and he blinked to that before looking back to Knock Out. “Yeah, yeah, I understand. Huh,” he frowned then as he processed that new piece of information. “But then if you weren’t…I guess I mean…If you weren’t _together,_ and you weren’t… _you know,_ then how…?”

Knock Out narrowed his gaze on the other mech slightly, not out of anger, but in question. “I thought you understood how the CNA donation process works? You seemed to have a pretty good grip on it when you spoke during the trial.”

Smokescreen shifted his gaze nervously around the cell. “I never said I knew how it _worked,_ I just said I knew the Functionists didn’t _like_ it.”

Knock Out rubbed his hand down his faceplates. Didn’t they teach these things to everyone? “A bot replicates a series of their CNA strands that are then filtered into data packets and uploaded onto a micro jump drive. That drive is then connected to the NewSpark during the sixth Formation Stage, when the Sentio Metallico is…,” Knock Out paused when he saw the blank stare Smokescreen was giving him, and decided that a short answer might be more appropriate. “Rollback and I each created our own data packets, put them on the same drive, and plugged it into your tiny brain node while it was still forming.”

“Ohhh!” Smokescreen nodded then, finally understanding, though he was quick to frown again. “I was right about the other stuff though, wasn’t I? She donated her CNA because she thought it would give me a better life…right?”

“Yes,” Knock Out nodded, “that’s what she believed. She loved Sparklings, she talked about them constantly, how she wanted one, how she wished she’d been sparked a Caretaker instead of a Constructibot,” he said as he shrugged, and he glanced back to the toy car to set his finger on its roof to roll it back and forth. “Your research was correct. When the war broke out and the Neomatter Facility was closing, they were looking to offload as many NewSparks as they could, so she jumped at the chance. Primus, I’m lucky she didn’t bring home _two_ of you,” Knock Out rolled his optics to that. “One was _plenty.”_

“…You didn’t want me?” Smokescreen asked, and he supposed he could have chosen his words better there, but that’s how it felt, as Knock Out clearly did not share the same enthusiasm for the idea.

Knock Out paused in rolling the toy car when he looked back to Smokescreen, debating his reply. The truth might hurt, but he knew lying would be worse. “I was…reluctant to her request to donate my CNA, at first. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want the responsibility. Sparklings and…what do the humans call it?” he paused, trying to think of the word, _“Parenting._ That’s not for me,” and he paused again at the dejected look Smokescreen was giving him. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s not what you want to hear, but I’m telling you this because we’re being honest, right?”

“Right,” Smokescreen nodded, though he dropped his gaze to his peds, “and I appreciate your honesty, I just…If you were so against it, why did you do it?”

Knock Out vented a sigh as he rubbed at his still-aching helm. His previous dread and anxiety of possibly being forced to serve his sentence aboard the Nemesis had decreased significantly, but he could feel the weariness from not having powered down in nearly two cycles starting to catch up with him. “She convinced me…eventually. She said I wouldn’t have to worry about the responsibility, that she’d take care of you herself. It was as you said at the trial, she truly wanted to afford you every possible chance at survival, and she believed her CNA would do that. So did I,” he shrugged. “So, we figured that between her CNA and mine, and what Primus sparked you with, you might stand a better chance than the rest,” Knock Out eyed Smokescreen again through weary optics. “The war was coming, we wanted to give you every possible chance to survive it.”

“I still have a few memories of her,” Smokescreen said, raising his head to look at Knock Out once more, “her _and_ you. They’re like…flashes. I mean, mostly I recognized you only from that photo but, sometimes these memories will creep up from my databanks, and I remember you,” he said, though he did not elaborate further.

Knock Out found himself suddenly worrying exactly what those flashes of memory entailed. Smokescreen was barely two mega-cycles when Rollback left Iacon with him, but Sparklings upgraded _fast._ The kid had already been babbling words and working through his first transformation sequences by then. Primus only knows what conversations he might be able to recall from that timeframe, or what instances he could remember. Knock Out, on the other hand, could recall _all_ of it, despite his own memory bank issues, despite not having dredged those files up in more than four million mega-cycles. They were not all happy memories, either.

“I remember you more than I remember her,” Smokescreen said, clearly confused as to why that was.

“Yes, well,” Knock Out looked away again as he raised his hand to rub at the back of his neck, “I said I didn’t want the responsibility of you, but I ended up with it anyway. After the war started, Rollback and her construction crew were tasked with building more and more battle ramparts around Iacon. She was working non-stop. She could barely care for you. I was still at the Academy when she asked me to start looking after you. I should have said no,” he shook his head at himself before looking to Smokescreen, “but I couldn’t. What choice did I have, really? What were we supposed to do, just leave you at home? Alone? Should I have brought you to classes with me? They would have never allowed it, I was barely getting through as it was.” And Knock Out blinked when he saw Smokescreen’s faceplates fall at those words.

_“That’s_ why you didn’t graduate?” Smokescreen asked as a wave of guilt washed through his signature, from his cell and right into Knock Out’s. “Because of _me_? Slag,” he said, now blinking at the floor.

“It wasn’t _just_ because of you,” Knock Out sighed again, wincing as he rubbed his fingers against his temples. “Primus, if _that’s_ the logic we’re using, you gave up the _Matrix_ because of _me,”_ he said with a slight glare to Smokescreen at that. “Look, I was doing poorly at the IMA to begin with during those final mega-cycles. I’d skipped so many classes by then they were already filing to kick me out anyway by the time Rollback brought you home. Since I _did_ end up taking care of you for those first few stellar-cycles, I’m sure that’s why you have more memories of me than her,” he shrugged. “Eventually, the war was close enough that they started to shut the entire city down, and Rollback ditched her crew and decided to leave with you.”

“You didn’t come with us?” said Smokescreen, looking shocked at the realization. He had always assumed Knock Out had either left with them and then gotten separated on their way to Crystal City, or meant to join them there later, but apparently that was not the case.

“No,” Knock Out replied, unsure as to why Smokescreen would care.

“Why not?”

“…I just wasn’t ready to leave the city yet,” Knock Out said, though just as he had not told Arcee the entire reason he had dropped out of the IMA, here and now, he was not ready to tell Smokescreen his entire reasoning for staying behind in Iacon, either. Before the younger mech might have a chance to question him further on that, however, Knock Out asked a question of him. “How did you end up in the Elite Guard? They operated out of Iacon, so you must have returned at some point. Rollback wasn’t with you, then?”

Smokescreen watched Knock Out warily for a moment, clearly hesitating to speak his own piece. “It’s…it’s all sort of hazy. There’s like this big chunk just missing,” he held up his hands to indicate some sort of size between them. “Aside from the flashes of you and her, there’s nothing. I don’t remember anything after that until I was maybe,” he paused, trying to recall the time period, “maybe four or five mega-cycles? I remember sitting in Alpha Trion’s study.”

Knock Out raised a brow to that. “They had you in the Elite Guard when you were _that_ young?”

“No,” Smokescreen nervously wrung his hands together as he eyed the floor again, “it was before that, after Alpha Trion found me.”

Suddenly Knock Out did not like where this was going. “… _Found_ you? What do you mean? Found you where?”

Smokescreen shrugged, still refusing to look to Knock Out. “That big mech, Roller, was escorting Alpha Trion through a bombed-out sector of Iacon one night, and they found me lying in the road.”

“In the _road?"_ Knock Out blinked to that. “Where was Rollback?” and he blinked again when Smokescreen finally looked back up to him to shake his head in silence, clearly having no idea what had happened to his Matron. Knock Out tried not to feel guilty about that. He tried to tell himself that just because he had donated his CNA to the mech, it did not mean he was _responsible_ for him. It had been _Rollback’s_ idea after all, not _his. She_ was the one who should have been watching over him when he was still that young, it wasn’t Knock Out’s fault the bot had ended up in the middle of the road in a war zone. But the guilt was still there, regardless of all the excuses Knock Out was trying to make up for himself, and he hung his head in shame for what felt like the tenth time that cycle and covered his optics with his hand. Primus, he didn’t need this on top of everything else.

And though Smokescreen could sense the guilt in Knock Out’s signature, his own EM field flared with anger again for a moment as he watched the ex-‘Con. “Do you understand now why I asked you all those questions before, when we were going through the ship?” he asked, his optics narrowing when Knock Out refused to look at him and only nodded in silence. Smokescreen tried to hold onto that anger a little while longer, but as more questions kept popping into his brain node, curiosity forced him to let it go. “I do remember _some_ stuff about her, about Rollback,” he said, “like her alt mode. She was a steamroller. But I’m a racecar, just like you. And I can drive really fast, just like you. And I have this here,” Smokescreen said, and Knock Out finally looked back up as Smokescreen tapped the thin red strip of metal that clefted his own chin with a finger, “just like you.”

Knock Out stared at Smokescreen then as though seeing him for the first time, and suddenly all of their physical similarities were so glaringly obvious that he was left to wonder how he hadn’t recognized his own Childe for so many mega-cycles when all of the signs had been literally staring him in the faceplates for so long. It was still hard for him to believe that the mech sitting in the cell across from him, who was now physically bigger and taller than him, was the same little half-formed NewSpark that Rollback had brought into their habsuite so many mega-cycles ago. He knew it was true, but his mind could barely coble the two pieces together, it was so unreal.

Smokescreen noted the way Knock Out stared at him in disbelief, though he was not offended. He knew it would come as a shock, hell, it had been a shock to _him,_ once he put it all together. Still, there were bits and pieces that did not make sense, and since he had Knock Out quite literally trapped in a cage in front of him, he intended to make the most of it, for his own sake, and so what if that was selfish of him. “If you’re a Medic, why are you a sports car?” he asked as he set his hands on the slab at his sides. “Why aren’t you a rescue rig like all the other Medics I’ve ever met? How come _I’m_ not a rescue rig?”

This conversation was now going exactly where Knock Out had dreaded it would. He knew that if he kept answering Smokescreen’s questions, eventually they would lead down this road, and he tried very hard not to cringe at Smokescreen’s last, and tried his best to give a very vague answer. “Look, you could have been _anything._ Between my CNA and Rollback’s and whatever you were sparked with, you could have been _any_ sort of vehicle. It was just luck of the draw that you started out as a racecar. Primus, if you don’t like it, you can always rescan another schematic and become something else.”

Smokescreen was clearly not satisfied with Knock Out’s reply, as he now narrowed his optics suspiciously. “I know, but I _do_ like it. I just don’t get why _you’re_ one. Did you get yourself a new schematic?”

“…No.”

“But you were sparked during the time of the Functionists, right? I thought they forced bots into castes and job classifications based on their alt mode?”

“…They did, yes.”

“Then why did they classify you, a racecar, as a Medic? Was Medic even your primary function?”

“Does that _matter?”_ Knock Out said, scowling himself now and clearly agitated by the question.

“No,” Smokescreen sat up a bit straighter as he was met with Knock Out’s anger-filled signature, “I was just curious. I mean, you’re not an ambulance or troop carrier or _anything._ You don’t _look_ like a Medic…Were you sparked as a Medic?”

Knock Out glared in silence for a moment, trying to gauge the sincerity of Smokescreen’s claim that he was only curious. He could not imagine any of the other Autobots would have put Smokescreen up to asking such questions, but even so, would the mech go blabbing that information to all of them later? On the other hand, did that even matter anymore? “No,” Knock Out finally muttered, still staring Smokescreen down with narrowed optics.

“Oh,” Smokescreen said, hesitating for only a nano-klick before he continued on, as though he truly did not care. “Were you a racer, like Blurr? Your fast enough that you could be.”

“No, I wasn’t” Knock Out vented a sigh then as he leaned forward and covered his face with a hand. Stupid kid and his stupid questions. And now Knock Out couldn’t even tell him to shut up. Sure, he _wanted_ to, but now the mere thought of doing it was contributing to the guilt that stemmed from the fact that he’d already done it several times before. He felt like he owed Smokescreen at least some sort of answers, but at the same time he was terrified to give them.

“Then what were you?”

“…Smokescreen,” Knock Out sighed, his annoyance at the questions flaring outward through his EM field.

“You can tell me, y’know, I’m not gonna care what you are,” Smokescreen said as he leaned forward as well, “I just wanna know where my CNA comes from,” and he glared then. “I think I deserve that much.”

Knock Out let his hand slide from his face as he glared at the floor between his peds. Was he really going to tell Smokescreen the truth here? He debated the question for only a moment before he decided that the full truth would have to wait. He would keep it to himself, for his own sake as much as Smokescreen’s. Still, he managed a relevant reply.  “My function fell under the Servant caste. Your Matron was a Constructibot and your Sire was a Servant. _Happy_ that you know all that now?” Knock Out shifted his gaze back up to Smokescreen to glare at him. “And thank Primus the system was torn apart before _you_ were sparked, because who knows what caste they would have placed _you_ into.” But where Knock Out was expecting disappointment from Smokescreen at that revelation, there was none.

“It doesn’t bother me what her caste was, _or_ yours. I don’t care. _Lots_ of pre-war bots came from those castes,” Smokescreen shrugged. “Are you a courier or something? Bumblebee was a courier y’know, before he became a cop working for Orion Pax, and he’s proud of it. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“It doesn’t _matter_ what I _was,”_ Knock Out snapped back now as his anger began to rise again.

“It doesn’t to me, but it might to them,” Smokescreen said as he pointed a finger down the hallway towards the lift. “They won’t let you be a Medic any time soon. Whatever you _were,_ is that what you’re gonna do now, on that work release program they were talking about?”

Knock Out blinked down the hallway then, realizing Arcee had not returned yet, and suddenly all of his worries were reignited all at once, and he felt that familiar tightness in his chest, like his spark was looking to break free and escape. “I don’t know,” Knock Out said as he quickly looked back to the floor and hid his face behind his hand again as that now-familiar shudder rattled his frame. Is _that_ what the Autobots had planned for him now? No, there was no way. Ratchet would _never_ allow that, would he? No, he wouldn’t. But what if…? The question ran back and forth through his mind so many times that Knock Out felt the panic start to rise up inside him once more, and he quickly shook his head before standing and walking the length of the cell again. The last thing he wanted was to break down into a bumbling mess in front of Smokescreen, or _any_ bot again, so he tried to refocus his attention back on the younger mech. “Listen, I know I said it already, and I know it isn’t enough,” Knock Out said as he paused at the end of his cell to look back to Smokescreen, “but I’m sorry, for everything. For not leaving Iacon with you and Rollback, for all that slag I did to you before when you were captured. And I know you didn’t have to stand up there today and say what you did on my behalf so…thank you for that. I’m sure it’s every Autobot’s worst false recall to learn one of his CNA donors is a Decepticon,” Knock Out paused there, not surprised to see Smokescreen silently hang in his head in shame. “But what will they say about you now?” he asked. “Aren’t you worried what they’ll think of you? You’ve taken such a huge risk. Why did you take such a _huge_ risk for _me?”_

“Because I’m your _coding!”_ Smokescreen looked up again as he gestured to Knock Out with a hand. “Because you knew my Matron! Because I think you genuinely _want_ to change and become one of us! And it’s just like you said, you’re the _only one_ still here! You deserve a chance. Optimus was _always_ willing to give you a chance, and the rest of us should, too.”

And Knock Out vented a sigh to that as he shook his head. Primus, the kid really _was_ naïve. “Smokescreen, you don’t understand—”

“No, _you_ don’t understand!” Smokescreen yelled before Knock Out could complete his sentence. “ _This_ is your chance to make everything right! _This_ is the new beginning, just like Optimus said, one where you get to _start over,_ to do things the _right_ way! Optimus always said no one is beyond redemption. That includes you!” standing himself now, Smokescreen stepped to the bars and pointed a finger to the cell across from him. “ _Promise me_ you’ll try to make a better life for yourself through this sentence.”

His armor plating and anger rising at Smokescreen’s tone, Knock Out glared back at the mech as he wrapped his hand around one of the glow bars. “Do you have any idea how much you’ve probably _fucked up_ your _own life_ by bringing all of this out in the open?”

“I don’t _care!_ If we’re really gonna rebuild Cybertron, then bots need to understand that affiliation doesn’t _matter_ anymore!”

“It will _always_ matter! Bots aren’t going to just forget the past because the war is over now! This is _so_ much bigger than just you and me!”

“Well, change needs to start somewhere, and it can start with us. We can prove them all wrong,” Smokescreen said as he hung on the bars of his own cell, and when Knock Out only shook his head and looked away, Smokescreen glared and raised his voice again, determined to get the other mech on his side for this, because he knew he couldn’t do it alone. “Sire, _listen_ to me!”

“ _Don’t,”_ Knock Out instantly turned his glare back to Smokescreen at the title and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you fragging call me that now! That time is _over,_ Smokescreen, it’s _gone,_ it’s _done!_ You asked your questions and I gave you your answers and I’m _done_ now! I don’t have anything else to give you! I don’t have any guidance or wisdom or…or whatever the _frag else_ it is that you read about in some Hall of Records text that makes you think a Sire _owes_ their Childe those things. And I’m _sorry_ for that, but I just don’t have it! I don’t have _anything_ anymore!” he growled, giving Smokescreen a final flash of his red optics before he moved away from the cell bars and sat not on the recharge slab, but on the floor behind it, so that he could literally hide from the other mech in the cell across from him, and he did not care how juvenile that made him look in front of his own Childe.

With a final, vented sigh, Smokescreen turned to reclaim his seat on the recharge slab, and turned his back as well. He could feel Knock Out’s anger drifting over from the other cell and into his, and he tried to push back at it with his own signature, but he found he was too consumed by the overriding sense that he had failed to make Knock Out realize that despite his sentence and uncertain future, he still had a Childe that cared about him.


	43. A Relinquishment of Assets

First Aid’s gaze wandered over the photos and posters that lined the walls and ceiling of Ironhide’s quarters within his shuttle, which was now docked just outside Shuttle Bay Seven of the Nemesis. Ironhide had always had a certain fondness for Earth-based alt modes, and he had amassed quite a collection of the humans’ car and truck magazines over the mega-cycles. He’d had his favorite images resized and scanned onto flexcell plastic so that he could hang them over his berth and ogle them whenever he wanted, which First Aid had always found ridiculous and hilarious at the same time. There was a trend that First Aid had picked up on: In all of the images, the humans posing beside the vehicles were always scribbled out, and the vehicles were almost always red or white or a combination of the two. The mech clearly had a type, and First Aid had often considered himself lucky to have fit those parameters.

But First Aid did not feel lucky today, the morning after the trial, and he was surprised to find himself waking up with a great sense of guilt. He lay beside the still-slumbering Ironhide for nearly an hour, staring up at the images of the vehicles tacked onto the low ceiling above him and questioning if he was actually worthy of such luck, and whether he was right to even be there at all, tucked inside Ironhide’s chest plates and enjoying the comfort and closeness of the other mech’s spark. He had not been aware that Ironhide had eventually come back online himself until the larger bot lifted his hand and tugged First Aid’s frame closer to him on the berth, so that he could press his face plates against the Medic’s side and release a contended sigh.

“Mmm…You _sure_ you gotta go back to Earth?” Ironhide’s vocalizer was so deep that First Aid felt it send vibrations through his armor plating, a trait that the Medic absolutely adored.

“ _Yes,”_ First Aid said, and he could not help but smile as he turned his unmasked face to the larger mech lying beside him, “I’m sure. We won’t be there forever, though.” He eyed Ironhide’s blue optics a moment before he turned to look back up to the images on the ceiling, and the guilt slowly crept back in.

Ironhide had returned the smile, though that quickly fell away when he picked up on the other bot’s signature. “Somethin’s eatin’ you up, First, I can tell.”

First Aid lifted a shoulder in a shrug, and his gaze fell away from the posters and photos for a moment. “I’m still thinking about the trial, I guess. There was a whole lot of emotion in that hangar, you know?” he turned his head to the side, so that he could look at Ironhide straight on. “Everyone’s EM fields were all smashed into one place at the same time and…I dunno. It was a lot to take in, that’s all,” he shifted onto his side so that he could fully face the other mech. “What was it like in the Council’s chambers?” he asked as he tilted his faceplates upwards. “I’ll bet that was just as tough.”

Ironhide was used to First Aid’s sensitivities by now, after so many mega-cycles of having known him. He’d not fully understood the Medic’s innate ability to hone in on another bot’s signature in the beginning, but he respected it, and saw the value of it, and he’d grown used to First Aid’s occasional spurts of emotional distress when the feelings of other mechs around him became too much for him to handle. And again, Ironhide didn’t necessarily understand where that all came from, but he saw it as an asset in First Aid and not a weakness, as he knew so many other mechs did. “Hmm,” Ironhide hummed as he brought up the recalls from the cycle prior, “it wasn’t so bad. Prowl had Ratchet match Smokescreen an’ Knock Out’s CNA so’s we could be sure o’ that, an’ then we got down ta the sentencing. I ain’t sayin’ it was easy decidin’ it all, but we got ‘er done. I think it was fair,” he shrugged one massive shoulder before he raised a brow to the smaller mech beside him, “don’t you?”

“Yeah,” First Aid replied, though he frowned as he did so, as though he was struggling to make sense of it all, “I do. Five vorns is a while, but he has to pay. He has to pay for everything he did.”

“You never told me what he did with you,” now Ironhide frowned as well as he watched First Aid, “about the capturin’ an’ the acid rain an’ the tradin’ you fer the relic. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No,” First Aid actually laughed at the comment, though he was quick to acknowledge Ironhide’s concern, and he smiled as he placed a hand against the larger mech. “He was kind of a jerk but…really, I was _lucky_ I ran into him instead of _any other_ ‘Con. And he _did_ save my life, _twice, and_ Bumblebee’s. I hope you guys took that into consideration when you were drawing up his sentence.”

Ironhide eyed First Aid for a moment, as if debating whether the mech was being sincere about his encounter with Knock Out, though he had never known First Aid to be a liar, so he quickly dismissed the idea. “‘Course we did. _I_ wanted to give ‘im less time,” he said as he shrugged again, “but some o’ them mechs, tsk, they don’t mess around. Hell, you seen how long we were in there debatin’.”

“Three hours,” First Aid muttered.

“Only three hours!?” Ironhide slapped a hand over his helm before he shifted onto his back on the berth, the hinges of his chest plates squeaking as they remained open with First Aid using the one side as a pillow. “Damn, it felt like more. What was the general vibe you were pickin’ up on from the crowd?” he asked as he glanced back to First Aid. “Did they believe ‘im? Did they think the sentencin’ was fair?”

“It was a mix, really,” First Aid said before he sat up on the berth, and he was short enough that his helm did not quite touch the low ceiling above it. “Some bots were feeling sympathetic, some hated him, some didn’t care one way or the other,” he shrugged, but then he clutched a hand to his own chest plates as he brought the memory of the trial through his processor once more, and it clearly pained him. “Oh, but Arcee and Smokescreen! I had _no_ idea,” he shook his head as he looked to Ironhide, “especially Smokescreen. I don’t think anyone had _any_ idea.”

“C’mon now, ‘course you didn’t,” said Ironhide as he wrapped his right servo around First Aid’s waist. “They kept all that hidden fer a _reason,_ dunch’a think?”

“I guess so…”

“What Arcee said, though, it don’t really make sense. Said they hung out in the same social circles, said they was friends an’ all,” Ironhide raised a brow to First Aid at that. “She wasn’t ever a Medic, was she?”

“No,” First Aid shook his head, “she’s Warrior caste.”

“Weren’t no Warrior caste before the war, mech. What’d she do before that?”

Frowning then, First Aid began a search of his memory files as he looked to his hands in his lap. “I don’t know, I never asked her. Maybe she held some other Medical Services function? A Nurse? An Aide of some sort? There were so many more functions within the caste back then.” First Aid brought up the IMA records he still held within his databanks, his gaze focusing inward as he skimmed those files as well. “I don’t have a record of her ever being in the Medical Sciences function. I _do_ have records of Knock Out but…That’s odd,” he paused at a particular piece of data as he came across it, “he was already 1.4 million mega-cycles old when he started at the IMA. That’s an awfully long time to wait to start your primary function training.”

Ironhide raised a brow to that as well. “Hell, they had me on the firin’ range before I was fifty mega-cycles. When’d you start _yer_ trainin’?”

“I was a hundred,” First Aid replied, his gaze still focused on the data he had pulled up on his HUD concerning Knock Out’s IMA records. “I wonder why he waited so long?”

“Hmm, an’ then he dropped out, ta boot? How many Medics you know dropped outta med school?”

“None,” First Aid confirmed, “none that I was ever aware of, anyway. Sure, there were bots that failed and had to repeat the training, but none that ever just flat-out _quit._ Knock Out was enrolled at the IMA, but I have no records of Arcee ever attending. Maybe she went to another school?” he shrugged as he mentally swiped the data from his inner screen to focus his optics back onto Ironhide. “How else would she have known Knock Out? Things were so segregated back then. If she wasn’t a Medic, or in training to be one, what sort of social circle would she and Knock Out have jointly been in that they would be friends?”

“Dunno,” Ironhide shrugged. “I woulda never pegged Knock Out as anyone’s Sire, though. That’s the _real_ crazy slag in all o’ this.”

“Yeah…,” First Aid glanced to Ironhide’s open chest plate and reached down to realign the seams of metal plating there. “Primus, I can’t believe I never noticed it before, how they sort of look alike. I mean…really, if you look at them side by side, there are so many similarities, I can’t believe we all missed them.”

“Hey, it’s alright. Ain’t like anyone had the time to compare mechs side by side while the war was goin’ on.”

“Yeah, true…”

Ironhide eyed First Aid fixing his armor plating for a moment. He never cared when the mech randomly performed routine maintenance on him, as he understood the way some bots were simply driven by their primary function ninety-nine percent of the time. “Did _you_ have a Sire or Matron?” he dared to ask, realizing that for all of their past discussions, he had never thought to ask such a question.

“No,” First Aid blinked up from his work to stare back at Ironhide’s blue optics. “Did you?” And when Ironhide shook his head, First Aid gave a nod before looking to the inner-workings of Ironhide’s chest plates again. “I don’t think many of us do. Smokescreen’s the first _I’ve_ ever met that has both.”

“Prolly the only mech in the galaxy like that.”

“Yeah, probably,” First Aid said as he frowned once more, his thoughts going back to the younger mech and how much it had clearly pained him to admit his past, as though it was something to be ashamed of. Cybertronian genetics had never been First Aid’s specialty. He had, in fact, tried to stay as far away from the subject area as possible, as it had been tied up in politics for as long as he could remember. It _shouldn’t_ have been, but it was, like so many other aspects of life, and First Aid had always hated how those aspects had been such a driving force behind what had ultimately led to the war.

Instantly picking up on the apprehension in First Aid’s signature, Ironhide frowned as he canted his head to the other mech. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just sad, really, how…how _messed up_ everything was before the war. I feel like we should have been able to prevent it, y’know?” First Aid said as he gave a somber look to Ironhide. “We should’ve been better than that. We _are_ better than that.”

“Well sure, but it was necessary,” Ironhide said as he placed a hand over First Aid’s. “I ain’t sayin’ it needed to last four million Goddamn mega-cycles, but it was _necessary,_ First. They was denyin’ bots equal rights an’ equal pay. The Functionists had us all fragged up. Somethin’ was bound ta happen, an’ it did. It just took a while fer things ta sort themselves out.”

“Yeah, and cost _billions_ of lives,” First Aid muttered.

“C’mon now, we’re the _lucky_ ones,” Ironhide said with a smile. “We’re the ones that get ta rebuild, we get ta make our own laws an’ fix all the wrongs the Functionists caused. We’re the _winners._ We get ta see life as it shoulda been all those mega-cycles ago. An’ when NewSparks start hatchin’, we get ta tell them they can be whatever the hell they wanna be. No more castes, no more function-biased _bull_ shit. Everything we was fightin’ fer, now _we_ get ta see it come to fruition, y’know? We’re so lucky,” he said, and his signature pulsed happiness for a moment, and he hoped that First Aid shared that enthusiasm with him.

But First Aid could only sigh, despite Ironhide’s signature and physical warmth at his side. He did not feel lucky, and he did not feel worthy, and he did not feel like he was on the winning side of a war that had lasted four million mega-cycles, and he knew that doubt could be heard in his vocalizer as he responded. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re so lucky.”

 

Smokescreen followed Ultra Magnus off of the lift and into the hallway, his gaze downcast as they walked through the corridors of the Nemesis. He had been unable to wrest any more information from Knock Out the previous evening once the mech had retired behind the slab in his cell and refused to so much as look at him. That afternoon however, when Ultra Magnus had come to collect Smokescreen, the younger mech had forced Ultra Magnus to wait while he requested the toy racecar back from Knock Out before he was escorted out of the brig for good. “Something to remember you by,” Smokescreen said as Knock Out almost reluctantly handed the toy back to him, and when the ex-‘Con still refused to make eye-contact, Smokescreen had pinned his hand to the glow bars with his own, so that Knock Out was forced to look up at him.

“I’ll come see you,” said Smokescreen as he held his own Sire captive against the bars. “Wherever they end up housing you, I’ll come see you, I promise,” though the hope that had filled his signature was quickly lost when Knock Out ripped his hand free from the glow bar and only shook his head as he moved away from Smokescreen without a word.

And as Ultra Magnus finally lead him away, Smokescreen quickly sent Knock Out an internal message, one with an invite to share a personal comm frequency, but he did not receive any notification of its acceptance, as Knock Out simply filtered the message aside, the request falling into place right underneath the similarly unaccepted invitation that Bumblebee had sent him stellar-cycles ago.

Now, as Smokescreen stepped into Ultra Magnus’s unofficial office suite and stood before his desk as the older mech read aloud the terms of his release and the community service that he owed for having hacked the Iacon Reproduction Database, Smokescreen found that the words were flowing through one audial and out the other. He muttered his way through the “Yes, Sir”s and salutes that were required of him and then left as quickly as he could.

Pressing a hand to his helm, Smokescreen headed towards the shuttle bays, his intent to simply pick up where he left off: Scouting duty with Wheeljack, though when he finally came across Bulkhead and Wheeljack, he was taken aback when Wheeljack gave him a scowl, transformed, and roared his engines as though in anger before departing from the open docks. Bulkhead remained for a moment, his blue gaze shifting between Wheeljack and Smokescreen as though he was undecided before he finally shook his head and transformed as well so that he could follow in Wheeljack’s path.

“Thanks for your support, guys,” Smokescreen muttered to himself as he glared after the two vehicles disappearing on the horizon, then he started for the open bay door, towards the sunlight streaming in from the outside. Their reaction, Smokescreen realized, was exactly what Knock Out had been insinuating might happen, and it was exactly what Smokescreen had feared would happen if he had spoken up about everything before the war ended. And Smokescreen supposed that it shouldn’t have bothered him, that he should have been able to rise above such juvenile nonsense, but he felt a twinge in his spark that suggested otherwise.

Feeling dejected and unsure of how he would ever fit into the Autobot community again, Smokescreen could not help but hang his head in a sulk as he moved to the ramp and started down it, mere seconds away from transforming so that he could carry out his scouting duties by himself, but the sound of his designation being called from the back of the dock made him pause and glance back.

“Smokescreen!” Bumblebee shouted as he made his way across the bay and over to the ramp, and when he saw the younger mech hesitate to remain, he raised a hand as he called to him again, knowing that if Smokescreen did transform and leave, he would have no way of going after him. “Smokey, _please_ wait.”

For one moment, Smokescreen wanted to run from the conversation he knew was coming. He did not think Bumblebee would be angry with him, but then again, he hadn’t expected Wheeljack and Bulkhead to be either. Venting a sigh, Smokescreen stepped back up the ramp to stand at attention as Bumblebee approached. ”Yes, Commander?”

“Don’t,” Bumblebee said at the sight of Smokescreen’s military mannerisms, but he quickly realized that _he_ was the one who simply wasn’t used to being treated in such a fashion. ”I mean, _at ease._ Thanks for waiting. I wanted to apologize to you,” he said as he sent Smokescreen a signature of deep regret. “I’m sorry that you ever felt you couldn’t tell me or any of the rest of us something about yourself. I didn’t realize how mean we were being to you. That was _never_ our intent…”

Smokescreen did not normally snap to attention around Bumblebee, he only did so now to keep himself from driving off, and he relaxed the instant the apology was given, though he shook his head at it just the same. “Thanks, but it was never you, ‘Bee, you know that. The others, though…” he paused as he glanced back to the metal landscape where the other two had finally disappeared. “I just…I wasn’t ready to share it…with _anyone,”_ he glanced back to Bumblebee then. “Even if you guys had all welcomed me with open servos from cycle one, I’m still not sure that I would have said anything.”

“Well either way, I’m sorry, and you’re braver than all of us. You didn’t have to say anything at that trial, but you did.”

Shaking his head again, Smokescreen cast his gaze downward, because he still felt as though he had somehow failed. “I dunno. I dunno why I said anything, but…I couldn’t just stand there and say _nothing_ , y’know?”

“I know,” Bumblebee offered a small smile, “but I’m glad you said what you did. I’m sure Knock Out is, too.”

“Yeah,” Smokescreen’s doorwings wilted to that, and the thought of how despite Knock Out thanking him for speaking on his behalf, the mech apparently wanted nothing else to do with him, “yeah, I hope so.” He lifted his head to look out at the horizon once more. “…I think Bulkhead and Wheeljack are mad at me.”

_“Mad_ at you?” Bumblebee blinked. “Why? Are you sure?”

Smokescreen nodded as he turned back to Bumblebee. “I saw them here just a few nano-klicks ago. They just glared at me and drove away. I’m supposed to be scouting with Wheeljack.”

“Oh really?” Bumblebee was glaring himself now as he too eyed the metal landscape before looking back to Smokescreen. “Let me know if you have any more issues with them, or any bot, for that matter.”

“’Bee,” Smokescreen vented a sigh, “look, I’m not trying to start any trouble here, I’m just saying—”

“No,” Bumblebee shook his head, “you were right, what you said at the trial. It’s time to start over, and we’re not going to do that successfully by getting angry at each other over things beyond our control,” he turned and started back towards the hallways. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll handle it.”

After Ultra Magnus had typed up Smokescreen’s release form and messaged him a copy, he had returned to the brig. He had taken no issue in sentencing Smokescreen for his past infraction, the young mech _had_ broken the law after all. Ultra Magnus had definitely put Smokescreen in the cell across from Knock Out on purpose though, in the hope that it would force them to talk to one another. Sometimes, Ultra Magnus rationalized, forced discussions were necessary. In hindsight, he should have tried the same tactic with Wheeljack, although there was still time to attempt that. He made a mental note of that possibility as he stepped to Knock Out’s cell and removed the glow bars. “Come on, let’s go,” he said as he looked to Knock Out, who quickly stood up from the recharge slab.

“Where are we going?” Knock Out asked, paranoia and confusion pulsing from his EM field.

“To your quarters,” Ultra Magnus gestured to the open hallway with a hand as he intended to keep Knock Out in front of him and in his sights at all times.

Knock Out hesitated instantly. He had been so careful to keep the location of his personal quarters hidden from the Autobots, but he was not surprised that they may have come across them during their own sweep of the Nemesis. It would not have been difficult to deduce which room was his, based solely on its proximity to the Medbay.

Slowly, Knock Out moved into the hallway as he watched the much bigger mech looming above him. Since Arcee had still not reported back on his request for information, he decided to try and get it himself. ”Is that where you intend for me to serve out my sentence?”

“No,” said Ultra Magnus, “you will remain imprisoned at Unit E on Earth until the mission there is complete or necessity dictates you should be moved to another location. We’re going to your quarters now so that they can be cleared of any high-value items or assets so that you can relinquish them, as per your sentencing agreement.”

The relief that washed over Knock Out’s frame at this news must have been obvious to Ultra Magnus, as Knock Out made no effort to hide it, but his anxiety level shot through the roof immediately again upon hearing the real reason for going to his quarters. He blinked down the hallway to the lift at the end, then back up to Ultra Magnus. “Then I want Ratchet here, not you. Sir.” He tried to sound polite about it, though it did not come across that way.

Ultra Magnus narrowed his optics for a moment before he nodded down the hallway for Knock Out to get moving. “Fine. I’ll see if he can meet us outside the habsuite,” he said as he sent a quick internal message to the Medic, wherever he was on the ship.

 

Ratchet was waiting for them by the door when they arrived, and though he could sense the small pulse of gratitude from Knock Out’s signature, the Medic side of him instantly registered the tension in Knock Out’s frame and the quiet hum of one of his internal cooling fans running full blast somewhere inside his chassis. Ratchet resisted the urge to open his arm panel and scan Knock Out from head to ped as he raised a brow to Ultra Magnus in question.

“Annotate and remove anything of value and message me the list,” Ultra Magnus said as he stopped beside Ratchet in the hallway. “The rest will be put into storage until he’s been paroled.” And with that, he turned and left.

Knock Out waited until he could no longer hear Ultra Magnus’s heavy footfalls before he finally looked to the wall panel and entered his ID code. “Thank you for coming,” he said quietly, without making eye-contact with Ratchet.

“It’s no trouble,” Ratchet replied, though he saw the way Knock Out’s hand trembled as he tapped the panel screen on the wall, and now that he began to wonder what was _really_ going on, he vented a heavy sigh. “Knock Out, please don’t tell me you’re hiding something in here that you should have revealed _before_ your trial…”

“I’m not,” Knock Out growled, clearly annoyed at such an accusation, though still he stood before the closed door as though he did not want to go inside.

“What is it, then? What’s wrong?”

Venting his own sigh, Knock Out shuttered his optics as he pinched the ridge of his helm between them. “I umm…I haven’t been in here in a while,” he said, and he did not think he had to explain why, for all the reasons that Ratchet, and the entire damn galaxy, now knew.

“I see,” Ratchet replied as he looked from Knock Out to the closed door, then back. He truly did feel for the mech’s loss of his Conjux, former Decepticon or not, and he tried to convey that in his signature and words. “I’m sorry this is difficult for you, but it needs to be done. If we don’t do it now, someone else will do it for you. I’m sure you’d rather do this yourself, wouldn’t you?”

Knock Out nodded to that as he opened his optics and hit the final button on the wall panel to open the habsuite door. They were instantly greeted by the faint smell of wax and armor polish, though it was mostly drowned out by the tangy odor of stale Engex and fermented high-grade.

Keeping his gaze locked on the floor as though he refused to acknowledge his surroundings, Knock Out walked through the large front room and straight to the back wall, where he flipped open another panel. Ratchet moved a bit slower as he trailed behind, his own optics shifting around the room and its contents as the motion sensor lights clicked on overhead.

A thin layer of space dust had settled onto every surface of every object in the room: On the metal seating platform that stood off to one side that looked like it could be converted into a berth, on the three crates that were stacked in one corner, on the square table that was wedged into another that was littered with empty Engex cans and, Ratchet noted as he moved closer, several empty vials of drugs and used hypoproto needles. There were no photos on the walls, no other chairs or seating arrangements other than the one that sat beside the table. The room itself was large, but despite the furniture and crates, it had a vacant feel to it, as though it had been sterilized and things were somehow missing from their places.

Ignoring everything but the task at hand, Knock Out entered a code into the panel which caused a quiet hissing sound to release from the wall as a large piece of it shifted outwards and then up on silent, gliding hinges to reveal four wall safes behind it. Knock Out stepped to them one at a time, turning each dial back and forth until the heavy doors popped open, and he swung them wide to reveal the contents of each. The first three were full of shanix and credit “cards”, the silver and gold squares stacked neatly from bottom to top.

Ratchet’s optics went wide as they were instantly drawn to the shimmering of gold and silver, and he had to blink and move to the safes to pick up one of the cards and turn it over in his hand just to be sure it was real. “Primus, how much _is_ this?”

“Two hundred million, or something like that. I forget the exact amount,” Knock Out said as he completed the final turn of the lock on the last safe.

Ratchet stared at the safes before he suddenly slapped his empty hand over his helm and groaned. The Decepticons had been robbing banks and breaking into vaults for nearly as long as the war. This did not bode well for the ex-‘Con now. “Did you _steal_ this, Knock Out? I’ll _have_ to tell Ultra Magnus if you did, you know. I can’t keep this from him, not _this_ many credits.”

Knock Out glared over to Ratchet as he swung the door open on the final safe. “I didn’t steal it, I _earned_ it.”

“Well!” Ratchet scoffed then as he tossed the card back onto the pile, “I didn’t realize Megatron paid his Officers so _handsomely.”_

Standing as still as his shaky frame would allow, Knock Out scowled at Ratchet in silence for a moment, anger flaring from his signature as he clearly debated something in his mind, until he looked back to the money in the safes, and then all of his rage was swept away again by his exhaustion. “I’m…expensive. I _used to be_ expensive,” he quickly corrected himself. “That’s how I earned it.” He gave his life savings a final glance before looking back to Ratchet. “Megatron didn’t pay us, but can you tell Ultra Magnus that he did? Please?”

Ratchet blinked from Knock Out to the wall safes again as he finally understood what Knock Out was implying, and he found himself at a loss for words for a moment before he vented a heavy sigh and rubbed a hand down his faceplates. “Alright.”

Nodding in thanks, Knock Out turned to the final safe and reached inside of it, though he did not immediately turn around to face Ratchet with what he held in his hand. He was not aware of the tension this gesture caused in Ratchet behind him, he was too caught up in his own thoughts, but he did eventually turn back to face the Medic, and reveal the two purple Decepticon badges he held in his palm. They both glistened as though they were brand new, the smaller one bound over the top of the larger with a simple piece of wire.

“During the Decepticon Branding Ceremony, the highest Commanding Officer in observance is given the honor of ripping out a part of the new recruit’s spark casing, which is then used to produce the affiliation badge,” Knock Out said as he looked to the badges with a weary sadness. “Megatron was the highest Commanding Officer in observance the cycle of _our_ Branding Ceremony…The small one is mine. The bigger one belonged to Breakdown. We never actually wore them because…Well, we just didn’t,” he shrugged, not wanting to get into the reasoning behind that choice right now. He idly rubbed his thumb against one edge of the larger badge. “One of these cycles I was planning to melt them down and cast a piece that I could weld back into my spark casing,” he clenched his jaw tight for a moment, clearly holding back tears before he managed to look back up to Ratchet and offer the badges to him. “Can you hold onto them for me until I can do that? I don’t want them locked up in storage like they’re just… _stuff.”_

As though Knock Out’s first revelation of what lay in the safes had not already caused even Ratchet’s old spark to twinge with a bit of sympathy, he felt that pain grow even more as he blinked to the badges, and was caught off-guard by the fact that a symbol he had come to hate and revile with such conviction was now bringing up feelings of deep sadness within him. He was almost tempted to let Knock Out keep them himself, but then thought better of it. “Yes, of course,” he said as he held out both hands to accept them, and he did not think twice when he opened a compartment in his plating to tuck them safely away inside his chassis. “I could help you construct the molding and fit the piece to your chamber, if you’d like.”

Knock Out was not expecting such an offer, and he gave Ratchet a startled look, as though he did not really believe it, before he finally nodded. Then he cast his gaze to the floor, his optics shifting from one side to the other in thought before he turned and headed back towards the exit. “The money is the only valuable thing to my designation, so I’m done here. Let’s go.”

Looking up from closing his armor plating, Ratchet raised a brow to Knock Out’s departing frame. “…You don’t want to pack up anything else?”

“It’s already packed,” he waved a hand towards the three large crates without actually looking at them as he passed them by.

Ratchet had started to follow him out, but now he paused to stare at the crates as yet another revelation hit him. “…You’d already been planning to leave,” and apparently it had been a while ago, judging by the layer of dust in the room. “Where were you going to go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere else,” Knock Out muttered as he stepped out into the hallway and touched the wall panel once more to erase his code so that Ratchet could create a new one to send to Ultra Magnus with his report of the surrendered funds.

Ratchet frowned as he created the new passcode, relocking the habsuite door and then focusing on his internal HUD as he created a message to Ultra Magnus, though his words were for Knock Out as he spoke. “Did you have another suite we need to clear?”

“No.”

“Where had you been recharging all that time then, if you weren’t staying in here?”

“In that chair behind the desk in the Medbay office,” Knock Out tried to conjure up another angry flare to his signature at that, to send Ratchet’s way, but the fatigue caused by his lack of a proper offlining to reset his circuitry was all starting to catch up with him. He vented another sigh as he rubbed his fingers over his shuttered optics. “When are we going back to Earth?”

Instantly feeling like an aft for having slept in Knock Out’s proverbial berth, Ratchet vented his own sigh before he shook his head and started down the hall, indicating for Knock Out to follow, and he noticed how the ex-‘Con was no longer calling it “my chair” or “my office” or “my Medbay”. “Tonight,” Ratchet said as he glanced back to him, “we’ll go back tonight.” He did not mention that he had actually planned on them leaving tomorrow, but it was now obvious to him that keeping Knock Out in the brig here was doing nothing good for his mental health, so he would change their departure plans.

Knock Out gave a nod as a little flicker of relief seeped from his EM field, but then he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait. There’s one more thing.”

 

After leading Ratchet down a series of hallways, Knock Out now stood before another non-descript door that hissed open once he’d entered in his access code. The lights that flickered on as they entered the room had a subtle, purple hue to them to match the purple Decepticon badge that was painted on the far wall. Along the other walls hung dozens of weapons and suits of armor from various alien races, and most of the floor was covered in the pelts of alien beasts. In one corner stood a full-sized, deactivated and joint-locked Cybervore, its razor claws reaching outwards menacingly.

Ratchet took one step into the room and froze, his optics going wide at everything he saw there. Even though there was no existing danger within the room, his internal alerts were being set off by the mere impression the room was giving him. It _felt_ evil, as though a dark presence loomed overhead or somewhere in the shadows. Knock Out walked into the room as though he felt none of these things, and he even blinked back to Ratchet in question when he realized the mech was no longer following him.

“What is this?” Ratchet’s vocalizer was almost a whisper as he continued to flick his gaze warily about.

Blinking again, Knock Out glanced around as well before giving Ratchet a look that suggested it ought to be obvious. “Megatron’s trophy room,” he said before he stepped to the large chair that sat at one end, the seat itself raised up from the floor by several steps as though it were some sort of throne. Knock Out pointed up, to the long shelf that hung over the seat where several objects and trinkets had been collected. “Up there, in the gold-plated box. If you stand on the chair, you could probably reach it,” Knock Out said as he looked back to Ratchet, who had finally found the ball-bearings to walk further into the room.

Being that Ratchet stood taller than Knock Out, this seemed like a reasonable request, though once Ratchet moved to stand beside the chair, he grumbled at having to take such a high step up, and he swore he heard his knee joints straining as he climbed up onto the seat of the throne and barely managed to scrape his fingers against the flat, golden box that sat high on the shelf as he reached his hand up to it. It took him several swipes before he was able to nudge it enough so that one corner of the box stuck out over the edge, and then he was finally able to stand on his proverbial “toes” and grab it.

Muttering something about being too old to be reaching for things in high places, Ratchet slowly climbed back down from the chair before handing the box to Knock Out, but the other mech only shook his head at the offer.

“You should keep them. They belong with you,” Knock Out said.

Ratchet raised a brow to that, eyeing Knock Out cautiously. He frowned down to the box in his hand and then flipped the latch with the other before he slowly lifted the lid open, and what he saw there almost made his spark stop.

The faces of two Autobot badges were looking back at him. They were cast in silver plating, not the traditional faction red, and they were quite large. Ratchet knew who they had belonged to in an instant, though he was so startled to see them there in that room full of alarming figures and the implication of so much death and darkness that he shut the lid on the box immediately, as though to keep those feelings out of it.

Knock Out did not need Ratchet to verbalize his emotional response to what he held, it was written all over his faceplates and in his signature, and to that, Knock Out nodded, but he quickly glanced to the floor when he gave his explanation for what lay inside the box. Only now did he feel a sudden pang of guilt about it, regardless of what Optimus had done to trick him into being there, back in reality to begin with. It was for Ratchet’s sake, not Prime’s, that Knock Out was making sure the badges were returned. “That time Optimus got amnesia and believed he was still Orion Pax, Megatron had me remove them and replace them with Decepticon badges,” Knock Out said as he eyed the alien beast pelt under their peds. “Megatron forced him to go through the Branding Ceremony, in this very room, actually.” He finally dared a glance back up to Ratchet, who was now unconsciously clutching the box to his chest plates as he stared at Knock Out. “As his Medic, I’m sure you noticed a piece of his spark casing was missing at some point.”

Ratchet swallowed hard as he eyed the room once more, now picturing Optimus, or Orion Pax rather, having a piece of spark casing ripped out by Megatron, surrounded by these horrific war trophies. When Optimus had arrived back at the Autobot base brandishing the Decepticon logo on each shoulder, the first thing Ratchet had done was check the bot’s spark casing and quickly rebuilt the missing piece. Why the Decepticons insisted on literally weakening their ranks by removing a crucial piece of their interior frame to prove their loyalty was beyond Ratchet.

“Yes,” Ratchet said as he finally blinked back to Knock Out, “I did notice that, and I fixed it, just like I’ll assist you in fixing yours,” he made a point to say, as suddenly he felt like he owed the ex-‘Con some sort of debt for having gifted the box of badges to him, even though he knew Knock Out was not looking for any sort of repayment and he had already offered to help Knock Out restore his chamber. “Thank you for these. You uh...” Ratchet tried to hold Knock Out’s gaze, though he quickly found he could not. It was as though Knock Out’s sadness over the Decepticon badges earlier had now transferred itself into Ratchet, and the old Medic was forced to clear his vocalizer to keep his emotional responses in check. _“*Ahem*_ You know how much they mean to me.”

And where normally Ratchet’s expression of gratitude would have made Knock Out’s spark soar, that little flicker of happiness was easily drowned by his own internal grief, and all he could do was nod as he too looked away before his emotions got the better of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Units of Time used in this fic:  
> Nano-klick: 1 second  
> Klick: 1.2 minutes  
> Cycle: 1 day  
> Deca-cycle: 3 weeks  
> Stellar-cycle: 1.7 months  
> Mega-cycle: 13 Earth months  
> Vorn: 83 Earth years


	44. A Servo

“I gathered you four here tonight because we need to have a discussion,” Bumblebee said as he stood on the Bridge of the Nemesis, eyeing the five Autobots that had assembled around him: Arcee, Smokescreen, Bulkhead, and Wheeljack. Earlier in the evening, Ratchet and Knock Out had returned to Earth via Spacebridge, but Bumblebee took the opportunity to address the rest of Team Prime’s old members now, before they were again scattered across two planets in a matter of cycles.

“We need to have a discussion about where we go from here, about where this planet and its returning inhabitants are headed. Bots are coming back by the hour now. The beacons are working, and the satellites are projecting our message even further out into the galaxy,” said Bumblebee as he looked from face to face. “That was the plan to begin with, to bring everyone home. _Everyone._ The Autobots, the Neutrals, the Decepticons, _everyone._ Even though we won this war, and even though we’re the ones in charge, this planet belongs to _everyone,_ even our past enemies. The three-hundredth bot to return to Cybertron stepped off their shuttle this morning. They’re _not_ a Decepticon, but one of these cycles, the next bot on the next shuttle _will be_ and, barring any physical attacks from them, we need to be prepared to accept them as we would the Neutrals.”

Wheeljack, who had been staring with narrowed optics to Bumblebee as he spoke, scoffed at the Commander’s last words. “If you think I’m welcomin’ Starscream back inta the fold, you’re outta yer Goddamn mind, ‘Bee.”

“The remaining Decepticon Officers will be handled accordingly,” Bumblebee replied as he looked to Wheeljack. “The Officers have more to answer for if and when they return. They’ll be put on trial the same way that Knock Out was, and they’ll be forced to pay for the war crimes they’ve committed, whether they’ve shown an interest in joining us or not,” Bumblebee was watching them all very carefully, trying to gauge their reception of what he was trying his best to convey. And yes, he had gathered all of them together, but this speech was quite clearly directed towards Bulkhead and Wheeljack. They knew it, too, they _all_ did, but that was exactly what Bumblebee wanted, to draw out that conversation from them that so clearly needed to happen.

“The Decepticons are coming, but I want to make one thing clear,” Bumblebee said as he again glanced to the four bots before him, “whether they were Officers, or infantry soldiers, or support troops, we need to remember that _before_ the war, _before_ they were Decepticons, some of them were our colleagues, or our friends, or our _family,”_ he looked to Smokescreen at that, who had, up until that point, been hanging his head and feeling for all the world as though this gathering was his fault, regardless of the fact he agreed with everything that Bumblebee was saying. _“_ We _all_ knew a bot or maybe even several that joined the Decepticon movement before the war really kicked off. We _all_ knew someone who joined the other side for whatever reason, but we need to remember that just like Smokescreen said yesterday at the trial, we _all_ come from the same place. We’re _all_ Cybertronians.”

Unbeknownst to Bumblebee, Prowl had taken up a position just outside one of the open entryways to the Bridge, his servos crossed as he leaned against the wall there, audials perked so that he did not miss a word of what Bumblebee was saying to his troops. He knew he could have entered the Bridge at any time to listen to Bumblebee’s dialogue and no one would have questioned his presence there, but he did not want the Commander to know he was listening in. He had his reasons.

“I understand how difficult things have been around here since yesterday,” Bumblebee continued. “I understand that a lot of new information was brought to light during that trial, information that might make us all question each other,” he glanced to Bulkhead, who was looking guilty. Wheeljack, on the other hand, was still glaring, his servos now crossed over his chest plates as he raised his chin a bit. “Arcee, Smokescreen, I’ve seen the way some bots look at you now,” Bumblebee said as he looked between the two with sympathy, though he was quick to then turn his attention back to Bulkhead and Wheeljack, and narrow his optics once more. “Some of those bots are standing here right now and I think, for the sake of this team, for the sake of this _family_ that we’ve been so lucky to have cultivated and been a part of over so many mega-cycles, we need to address this issue _now,_ before it ruins everything we’ve worked so hard for.”

Now, as Wheeljack continued to glower at him, Bumblebee felt his anger rising a bit, his doorwings going ridged behind him, those unfortunate indicators of his every mood, whether he wanted them to be or not. He wished he could be like Optimus, and remain as calm and collected as the Prime could at seemingly all times, but the childish ridiculousness of this entire situation had, quite frankly, made Bumblebee absolutely livid. His anger as of late had surprised him, though he blamed it on his missing T-cog. The thought of its absence pestered his mind the way a fly buzzed around a human’s ear, but the fly was _always_ there, _every_ cycle, a constant reminder that he was less than complete. It was getting to him, and it was finally starting to show. He narrowed his optics as he looked back and forth between Wheeljack, who had turned his scowl to Smokescreen, and Arcee, who was now standing defensively in front of the youngest bot, her servos crossed as she returned Wheeljack’s scathing look.

“Wheeljack,” Bumblebee finally called him out, “you look like you might have something to say.”

Wheeljack did not care that Bumblebee had singled him out in front of them all. They all knew why they were _really_ here, and there was no sense in beating around the cyberbush anymore. The mech wanted a “discussion”? _Fine._ “You should have told us, _both_ of you,” he said as he continued to glare at Smokescreen and now Arcee as well.

“Why?” Arcee raised both brows. “What difference would it have made? It clearly didn’t make a difference with you _not_ knowing!”

“Because slag like this is important! I gotta know who I’m workin’ with, here!”

“Did you not listen to a _single word_ Bumblebee just said?” Arcee asked, “Or _anything_ Smokescreen said at the trial? It doesn’t _matter_ who we knew four million mega-cycles ago! We’re _all the same!”_

“You were _friends_ with a ‘Con an’ you never told anyone!” Wheeljack countered.

“Optimus and Megatron used to be friends,” Smokescreen finally spoke up.

“Oh, yeah, and look how well THAT turned out!” Wheeljack shouted.

“Alright, I’m _done_ with you,” Bulkhead too, finally found his voice as he looked up from his guilty sulk to glare at Wheeljack, and he gestured with a hand to Arcee and Smokescreen. He let Wheeljack run the show more often than he liked to admit, but even Bulkhead had been having a hard time refusing to forgiving Arcee and Smokescreen for their past. “It’s not _their_ fragging fault Knock Out became a Decepticon!”

“I never said it was their _fault!”_ Wheeljack glared up to the much taller Bulkhead beside him. “They _knew_ him! They coulda given us info on ‘im while the war was still on! _Useful_ info!”

“’Useful info’?” Smokescreen blinked to that before his anger flared from his signature as well. “I was, like, _three_ mega-cycles old! Whadda you expect me to remember?”

“Well _you_ weren’t three!” Wheeljack said as he focused on Arcee again. “The frag does ‘same social circles’ mean, anyway?”

“It means none of your Goddamn business, that’s what.”

“Jackie, come on!” Bulkhead rolled his optics at the bickering. “It’s not like _we_ didn’t know him, too!” And then he blinked as all the other bots suddenly looked to him. “What? It’s true. He was a Wrecker.”

“He was NOT a Wrecker!” Wheeljack was very quick to point a finger up at Bulkhead as he growled. _“He_ never took that oath! _He_ was never tested like the rest of us! We _earned_ that title, _he_ didn’t!”

“Well, he was our Medic for long enough, and he saved our afts! Mine _and_ yours! Yours _frequently,_ if I remember correctly! He was an honorary member!”

Smokescreen just stared for a moment at everything the two were saying before he finally glared to them both. “Why the hell didn’t say any of this at the trial!?”

“Mech, I ain’t speakin’ on Knock Out’s behalf! He left the Wreckers after three-hundred mega-cycles and he took one of our best guys with ‘im! I ain’t thankin’ him fer _shit!”_ Wheeljack yelled.

“And why didn’t _you_ say anything at the trial?” Arcee challenged Bulkhead, who immediately looked away from her.

“I dunno,” Bulkhead shrugged one massive shoulder, his optics flicking between Wheeljack and Smokescreen. “I dunno. Maybe I shoulda.”

“Oh please,” Wheeljack grumbled. _“You_ don’t owe him shit _either,_ Bulk!”

“Well, I wish you _had_ said something,” Smokescreen said to Bulkhead before shook his head and looked elsewhere.

“I’m sorry,” said Bulkhead as he gave Smokescreen a look of genuine regret. “I guess if I’da known you were…Maybe I woulda…” Bulkhead started and stopped his sentences as he tried and failed to come up with something meaningful, though he suddenly glared to Wheeljack, as though he’d finally realized something. “You can’t hold them to different standards, Jackie. Hell, we were the ones to know Knock Out last, right before he went Neutral. If anyone’d had any useful info on ‘im, it woulda been us, and _I_ sure never thought of anything.”

Now Wheeljack rolled his optics before he shook his head and turned away from Bulkhead to glare back to Bumblebee. “Is _this_ what you wanted, ‘Bee? Is this the kinda ‘discussion’ you were lookin’ for?”

“Yes,” Bumblebee said, returning Wheeljack’s glare. “Knock Out is one _former_ Decepticon. _One._ You’d let everyone’s past dealings with _one_ former Decepticon tear apart the friendships you’ve made here? You’re seriously willing to let _one_ bot break up this team?”

“Hey, I have _every right_ to be angry at Knock Out!”

“Your anger almost got me _and_ him killed!”

“So my aim was a little off that cycle! I thought he was _killing_ you!”

“He was _fixing_ me! If you’d taken just five nano-klicks to ask questions before shooting, he would have told you that!”

“I’m _sorry!_ I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up!” Wheeljack said as he gestured to Bumblebee with both hands. Rarely one to admit he was wrong, he flared a small signature of regret to Bumblebee, and only him, because there honestly was a part of him that felt guilty for any further damage he might have caused Bumblebee with the rocket detonation so close to his frame. He was _not_ however, sorry for assuming the worst of Knock Out’s intentions that cycle.

“I’ll accept that apology when you give the same to Knock Out,” Bumblebee said, still glaring to Wheeljack. “Listen: We have _got_ to start rising above affiliation here. If we don’t, it will be the end of us,” he said as he finally looked back to the others. “ _Optimus_ would want us to rise above affiliation, and if he were here right now, I’m sure we’d be having the same conversation.” Bumblebee paused then, suddenly aware of how hard he was clenching his jaw and the borderline rage he was pushing through his EM field. He vented a deep, slow sigh as he tried to calm himself before continuing. “And I’m sure if Optimus was here, he’d be telling all of you this with a lot less anger than I am right now, and I’m _sorry_ for that, but I just…I thought we were _better_ than this! We _have_ to be bigger and better than this, _all_ of us! I _know_ it’s hard. It's hard for me, too. And I’m not trying to make light of the past four-million mega-cycles of war, but that was the _easy_ part. The real struggle begins now, when we’re forced to set aside our differences and work together with the Decepticons.”

Disappointment wound its way into Bumblebee’s signature for a moment, because he still could not believe he needed to say such things aloud. He silently wished that Optimus was still there to be saying all of this instead of him. It would have all sounded better coming from Optimus Prime, Bumblebee knew, and for that, he was just as disappointed in himself. With a final sigh, Bumblebee wiped both hands down his faceplates before looking to them all, though his gaze did linger on Wheeljack a bit longer than the rest. “I’m not asking you to forgive the Decepticons, but you should at least forgive each other. It’s _okay_ that we all knew them before they chose a side, that doesn’t make anyone less of an Autobot now. Can we all at least agree to that?”

No one spoke for several nano-klicks, though Bumblebee was not surprised when Smokescreen was the first bot to step forward and extend a hand to Wheeljack, an obvious attempt at a peace offering as he held the older mech’s gaze.

Wheeljack clearly hesitated, eyeing Smokescreen’s hand for a moment before he vented a sigh and reached out to shake it, and he missed it when Smokescreen smiled with relief, as he did not hold his gaze for long. “Alright, fine,” Wheeljack muttered. “It ain’t _yer_ fault Knock Out is what he is.”

_“_ What he _was,”_ Smokescreen corrected him, though he was still smiling.

“Don’t push it, kid,” Wheeljack grumbled, though he was not looking to argue over it any further. He eyed Arcee then, who was still glaring at him, and she did not offer a hand to shake, which Wheeljack could care less about. “I guess it’ll just take me some time, that’s all,” he said as he crossed his servos and looked back to Bumblebee.

“That’s fine. No one is expecting everyone to change overnight,” said Bumblebee, making sure to look to Arcee as well when he spoke.

“Anyway, if we’re done here, I have slag ta do,” Wheeljack said as he jerked a thumb towards the exit, and he turned to leave as soon as Bumblebee gave a nod.

Bulkhead watched Wheeljack leave, though the other mech was still within audial range when he put a massive hand on Smokescreen’s shoulder as guilt spread from his signature. “I’m sorry if I came off as an aft to you earlier, and uhh…I’m sorry I was such an aft to you when you first joined up with us. I shoulda been nicer, I didn’t realize how mean we were,” he said, recalling Smokescreen’s words from the trial.

“Thanks,” Smokescreen said with a nod, “but I kinda always figured if anyone had an excuse to be an aft to me, it was you. You thought I was gonna replace you on Team Prime. If I was as broken as you were back then and some mech like _me_ showed up, I’d probably be a little worried and angry, too.”

“Still,” Bulkhead shrugged as he headed for an exit with Smokescreen, while Arcee and Bumblebee moved to the Navigation center on the Bridge, “I wasn’t nice. Being nice wasn’t something we practiced very much in the Wreckers. I think I kinda lost that skill for a while.”

“Speaking of,” Smokescreen said as he stepped after Bulkhead, “the bot that Knock Out took with him when he left the Wreckers, was that...?” and he did not need to finish his sentence, for Bulkhead was quick give him a solemn nod and reply.

“Breakdown.”

 

Knock Out did not have the energy to protest Ratchet ordering him into the Medbay the moment they had Bridged back to Unit E on Earth. He just wanted to go back to his cell and fall into the deepest sleeper mode his mind would allow him, though he was already dreading the false recalls he knew his databanks would conjure up. He’d said nothing when Ratchet ordered him to sit on the end of one of the medslabs, or when the Medic scanned him with his diagnostic beam before he stepped off to the counter to unlock the cabinets above it and remove several bottles to mix something there. When Ratchet returned and handed the small vial of pinkish liquid to Knock Out, he didn’t even bother to ask what it was, he simply tossed it back, then took the bottle of Energon Ratchet offered next. He did however, note when Ratchet pulled an impact wrench out of a drawer, but still said nothing as Ratchet stepped around behind him and began to remove the lug nuts from his remaining shoulder-mounted tire. Knock Out offered no objections. As Ratchet worked, he talked, and continued even when Knock Out said nothing in response.

“Arcee asked me to deliver a message to you,” Ratchet said between the grating whir of the impact wrench twisting the lug nuts loose. “She said she’s sorry she couldn’t get back down to tell you where you’d be serving your sentence. Ultra Magnus wasn’t allowing any bots into the brig, once he took Smokescreen down there,” Ratchet set a handful of lug nuts on the slab. “I never realized that you and Arcee…” he paused as he unscrewed the last of lug nuts, then set them and the wrench aside before he used both hands to remove Knock Out’s tire from the wheel hub, “…Well, I _thought_ your early medical history looked familiar, when I read it. I would have never guessed you’d _both_ been working for Senators,” he shrugged. “I knew what she was. She probably wouldn’t believe me that I’d forgotten after a while, but I did. I knew, I just never thought to ask her anything about it. None of my business, really.” He set the tire on the floor at his peds, then carried on removing the rotor disc and brake components.

The moment the weight of the tire was removed from his shoulder axle, Knock Out felt instant relief from the pain in his lower back, and then even more so when Ratchet finally removed the axle itself. Knock Out could not help but roll his shoulder and sit up a bit straighter to stretch his back struts appreciatively. He watched Ratchet carry the tire and axle away from the slab and set them on the floor to lean against the lower cabinets, though he still said nothing as he looked sullenly back at the Energon cannister in his hand.

“That was very nice of you, to look after her,” Ratchet said as he slipped the impact wrench back into the drawer at the counter, “I’m sure you did a good job. You were a good friend to her.”

“We only had each other,” Knock Out finally spoke, barely aware that of the praise he was being given. “I wasn’t going to just leave her to fend for herself,” he took a sip of Energon, and as he eyed the collection of lug nuts on the slab at his elbow, he suddenly realized how fuzzy everything was starting to look around the edges, and how oddly _still_ his mind felt after having a thousand thoughts and emotions running through his processor non-stop. He blinked back to the empty vial, then slowly over to Ratchet. He supposed he should have cared that the bot had given him mood suppressants without asking if he wanted them first, but then again, he could have just as easily ordered Knock Out to take them whether he wanted them or not. Not that he cared either way, now that the drug was doing its job. That was why Knock Out hated mood suppressants to begin with, they took away a bot’s ability to give a damn about _anything,_ as though all emotion had simply been erased, in very much the same way that Shockwave seemed to operate on a cyclical basis _._ Knock Out had administered them to several patients himself in the past, and not always at their request. The drug, if given in large enough doses, could easily have a mech the size of Ultra Magnus drooling and unresponsive in a corner in just a matter of klicks. Unlike a sedative, suppressants could be used as a tool to keep the really out of control bots docile and submissive yet still fully awake and functional if you got the measurements just right.

Knock Out slowly blinked to Ratchet again, now struggling to put words together in his mind before speaking them. “This’s your plan, huh? Just gonna…drug me and lock me up forever?” he looked down to the container in his hand and gave it a blank stare. “I guess that’s okay.”

“Tsk, not _forever,_ Knock Out,” Ratchet rolled his optics. He’d been silently waiting for the suppressants to kick in, and now that they clearly were, he stepped back to the slab to take Knock Out by the elbow and carefully guide him to stand up and head for the exit, “just for today.”

“So you can take my T-cog,” Knock Out muttered matter-of-factly.

“No, so you can rest. You need to reset your circuitry. Your core is already running five degrees hotter than it should be, you need a break. This will clear your mind so you can shut down for a while,” Ratchet said along the way to the lift, and once they made it to the first sub-level and he had Knock Out seated on the recharge slab inside the cell, he paused to remove the container of Energon from Knock Outs hand and set it on the floor, then composed an internal message on his HUD, which he sent to Knock Out via his comm link. When the other bot gave zero indication that he’d received it however, Ratchet grumbled to Knock Out, whose head was already starting to loll to one side, and he grasp him under the chin with a hand and leaned close to try and catch his gaze. “Knock Out, look at me. Do you see the internal message I just sent you?” he asked, and waited while Knock Out’s optics stared blankly ahead while he brought up his internal inbox before he gave a single nod of his head. ”Good. Accept it.”

Unable to give much attention to detail, Knock Out mentally checked off the message in his inbox and accepted it. It was a link to Ratchet’s personal comm line. Knock Out did not realize however, that he’d accidentally checked the “select all” box, and accepted not only Ratchet’s, but both Bumblebee’s and Smokescreen’s pending personal comm link requests as well.

“Thank you,” Ratchet said as the notification of Knock Out’s acceptance popped up on his HUD. He tried to get Knock Out to focus on him one last time. “Look at me and listen. Shut off your systems and sleep. Comm me if you need anything, but I’ll still come by to check on you later. Okay?”

“Okay,” Knock Out said as he shuttered his optics, and he probably would have simply sat on the slab for hours had Ratchet not gently pushed him down onto it and made sure his peds were no longer situated on the floor. It took only a matter of nano-klicks of feeling the hum of the recharge slab against his faceplates before Knock Out’s systems powered down. He didn’t even hear the cell bars locking into place as Ratchet left.

 

Rafael walked into the Medbay after being dropped off at Unit E, as he always did now once school let out. Since Bumblebee lacked a T-cog, it was more often than not one of the grounder Vehicons that came to pick him up, and while the first few times it had made him uneasy, he quickly overcame his fear once he realized they actually _enjoyed_ picking him up and racing down the highways while blasting music in very much the same fashion that any of the Autobots would have (except Ratchet of course, who _never_ sped and obeyed _all_ the Earth traffic laws _all_ of the time).

On that particular morning, Rafael found Ratchet at his usual work bench, hunched over his latest project, and he smiled to the Medic as he walked through the massive doorframe. Rafael would never let on how wonderful it was to have Ratchet, Bumblebee, and First Aid back on Earth again, for fear that if he said it out loud, he might jinx it and they would suddenly be forced to pack up and leave all over again. “Hey, Ratchet!” he said as he walked towards the towering figure.

“Hello, Rafael. How was school today?” Ratchet asked as he glanced down to the tiny human at his ped before he leaned down to offer him a hand to climb on.

“Stupid,” Rafael muttered as he clambered onto Ratchet’s offered palm and held onto one of his fingers as he was lifted high into the air and then placed on the counter top.

“Oh, don’t say that. Knowledge is power, they even say that on Cybertron,” said Ratchet as he gave a small smile, picking up his pliers once more and getting back to work.

Rafael shrugged his bag from his back and unzipped it to remove his laptop, rolling his eyes at Ratchet, who could sometimes sound just like his mother, though he never told the Medic this. “I know, it’s just so slow and _boring.”_

“Perhaps you should take more difficult classes.”

“I already do. I’m on track to graduate an entire year early.”

“Really? That’s impressive. What next, then? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Smiling to the question, Rafael walked along the counter top to the smaller comm station that had been built at the end of counter, to plug his laptop into it. The Autobots had long ago given him access to the few historical archives they had, but now that the war was over, every time he accessed the database, more and more new information was waiting there for him to discover. It was the biggest and best distraction from his homework he’d ever had. “Ratchet, you know that’s what you ask _little_ kids, right?”

“Aren’t you a little kid still?”

“I’m fourteen!”

“Ohh, I see,” Ratchet nodded, looking suddenly serious, though he was clearly doing it in jest, “that’s _very_ old, yes.”

Regardless of the way it was said, Ratchet’s question had Rafael thinking, and he shrugged as he sat down cross-legged in front of the comm station screen and set his laptop in front of him as he logged on. “I dunno what I wanna be, actually, I can’t really decide. My parents and teachers think I might be able to get a few scholarships with some of the bigger universities. I think I could too, but I dunno what to major in, yet. It’s a toss-up between astrobiology and mechanical engineering. Maybe I’ll do a double major or something,” he shrugged again, then glanced over to the metal parts Ratchet was working on. “That looks like an arm.”

“It is. This is the interior framework of Knock Out’s new servo,” said Ratchet as he clipped a final wire with the pliers and set them aside, then he carefully flipped the frame pieces over, and Rafael quickly stood back up and ran over to get a closer look.

When the three human children had first started coming around the Autobot base mega-cycles ago, Ratchet had been annoyed by _all_ of them, even Rafael. But he’d quickly come to realize that the boy’s constant questions came from a place of genuine curiosity and not just as a filler for silence, which Ratchet was certain was the only reason _Miko_ ever asked any questions. And once Rafael was able to rid the base computer system of viruses, and he began to show an aptitude in so many other areas of Cybertronian technology, the littlest human quickly became Ratchet’s favorite, and had remained so to this cycle.

“And you built the whole thing yourself?” Rafael asked as he stood at the socket end of the elbow joint and peered into the giant circular opening.

“I assembled it from pre-fabricated parts and made the ones that were still missing, yes,” said Ratchet as he gave his work a final once-over.

“Look who was awake,” First Aid’s voice called from the doorway as he stepped into the Medbay, followed by a very groggy-looking Knock Out.

“Well well, it’s about time,” said Ratchet as he watched the two enter, and he pointed to an empty stool beside the counter for Knock Out to sit, which the mech did without a word. “It’s only been…sixty-seven hours,” Ratchet commented as he flipped open his servo screen and checked the time there before he ran his blue diagnostic beam of light over Knock Out’s frame.

“I have to get back to the mine,” First Aid said as he gave a nod back towards the door. “I was just picking up some Energon rations. We should be back around eighteen-hundred tonight. Raf, could you Bridge me back?”

“Sure,” said Rafael as he ran back to the comm station and his laptop as First Aid said his good-byes and left the Medbay to head for the Groundbridge.

“Feeling better?” Ratchet asked as he shut the servo screen, then transformed his index finger on his right hand into a light, which he shone directly into Knock Out’s optics, one at a time.

Wincing at the brightness, Knock Out willed himself to remain still long enough for Ratchet to conduct his assessment, but he still grumbled his reply as he lifted his hand to rub at his optics. The mood suppressants had long-since worn off, and he was far less inclined to be so compliant. “Yes.”

“Good, because this is ready for installation,” Ratchet gestured to the servo frame parts on the countertop, and Knock Out finally showed some sort of interest as he blinked to them. “Are you ready for a little Bot Anatomy 101?” Ratchet said as he glanced back to Rafael, who gave an eager nod as he moved back towards him, and Ratchet scooped him up to set him on his shoulder for a better view before he picked up the first piece. “Excellent. Now, the trick with servo frames is to set each piece separately, one at a time, at each joint. You should never attach a fully-assembled servo at the shoulder socket, or your liable to short-circuit the electrical conduits. This large piece here is called the Outboard Clavicle Joint, and…”

Knock Out suddenly felt like he was sitting back in a classroom at the IMA as Ratchet walked Rafael through the entire process of reattaching a servo frame. He said nothing as he watched the process as well, not that he was unfamiliar with it by any means, hell, he could have taught an anatomy class himself, at this point. He’d not seen any Medic’s framework fabrication other than his own in a long, long time, and he was silently judging each piece as Ratchet attached them and then tested them all, one at a time, to ensure that Knock Out had full mobility and functionality in each before he moved on to the next.

When he’d finally woken up from his dreamless sleep a mere thirty klicks earlier back in the cell, for one amazing nano-klick, Knock Out had been conscious and yet had completely forgotten all of his troubles and worries. For one instant, his mind felt free of everything that had been getting him down for so long, but then the rest of his brain node finally kicked into gear, and reality came crashing back down on top of him, and he found he did not want to get back up to have to face it again. He’d been trying to will himself back into sleeper mode when First Aid came to check in on him. Still embarrassed by his earlier actions in front of the small Medic, Knock Out felt he somehow owed First Aid, at the very least, the decency of doing whatever he asked without complaining about it, so he had gotten up at the mech’s suggestion and let himself be led to the Medbay despite inwardly hating the idea.

But now, as Ratchet finally reattached the framework of Knock Out’s hand to the socket of his new wrist, Knock Out could hold back his comments no longer, and he blinked to his new _three-_ jointed fingers as he flexed them in front of his optics before he looked to Ratchet. “This isn’t my hand.”

“I’m aware of that,” Ratchet said as he offered his palm to Rafael, who stepped onto it from Ratchet’s shoulder so that Ratchet could place him back on the counter, “it’s a Medic’s hand.” And when Knock Out gave him a glare like he was not amused by what he clearly perceived to be a tasteless joke, Ratchet frowned. “Don’t give me that look. I started making it well before the trial, and you can _still be_ a Medic somecycle, you know.”

“Sure, four classes, a licensing exam and _two million mega-cycles_ from now,” Knock Out muttered, scowling at the hand now as he turned it back and forth like it was useless to him.

“There were bots in that room that wanted to make it _four million.”_

“I’m not surprised.”

Now Ratchet glared as he crossed his servos. “Well if you don’t want it, I’m sure I can find a more _grateful_ bot on Cybertron who’s also missing a hand that would want it.”

“I’ll keep it!” Knock Out was quick to clutch the hand frame to his chassis with his complete right hand, leaning slightly away from Ratchet on the stool as though to protect it from him. “It’s just… _different,_ that’s all.”

Ratchet held his glare for a few more nano-klicks before he grumbled at Knock Out’s attitude, but quickly let his anger go. “I fashioned it after my own. It’s not as _good_ as mine used to be, mind you, they’re very hard to replicate, but it’s close. Look here,” he said, offering his hand to Knock Out and pointing to each knuckle, “with the extra finger joints, you’ll have much better manual dexterity. These fingers don’t rely on pincer movements the way the fingers on your right hand do,” and he raised a brow to Knock Out at that. “Why did you never upgrade your hands yourself? Hasn’t having only two knuckle joints per finger made everything more difficult?”

Knock Out blinked, now comparing his two hands side-by-side. “They’re all I’ve ever known, they’ve never made things difficult for me. Besides,” Knock Out glanced back up to Ratchet as he held up his complete right hand and splayed his pointy digits, “these fingers come with their own set of skills.”

“Oh?” Ratchet said as he raised a brow, “I didn’t realize you had integrated metacarpal hardware. What sort of medical tools do you—” and then he cut himself off as he watched the fingers of Knock Out’s right hand come unhinged at the tops of each of their single knuckles and drop to his palm, releasing a series of long, key-like structures from the base of his fingers in much the same way the needles grew from Chromedome’s. Ratchet took one wide-eyed look at the slender keys that were certainly tools, but _not_ for medical purposes, and then quickly slammed his hands down right over Rafael, trapping him inside a cave made of his metal palms, so that the human could not see what Knock Out’s fingers turned into, not that Rafael would have ever been able to recognize them for what they truly were.

“Hey!” Rafael’s muffled voice called from inside Ratchet’s clenched hands.

“Alright, put them away! I get the idea!” Ratchet quickly averted his gaze from Knock Out entirely, so his missed the smirk the other mech was now giving him.

“Well, _you_ asked,” Knock Out rolled his optics as he reset his fingers back into their original positions.

“Yes, yes, I did. My fault, I suppose I should have known better,” Ratchet quickly held up a hand, thus releasing Rafael from his “prison” of fingers.

“Wanna know what my servos turned into before I had the saw and drill installed?” Knock Out could not help but ask, because he knew Ratchet would flip out, and he was enjoying this one, tiny little power he apparently had over the other mech, which was to make him squirm uncomfortably at the mere suggestion of any form of intimacy. Primus, he was worse than First Aid.

“NO!” Ratchet yelled, clearly embarrassed.

“Yes!” Rafael said immediately after, having no idea at all what the other two were insinuating. “What were they?”

“They were—” Knock Out began, though he instantly caught the threatening glare Ratchet was giving him, and he quickly changed his words as he looked to Rafael. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“How old?”

“Fifty!” Ratchet grumbled as he moved away from the counter and grabbed a large barrel from one side of the room, which he now dragged over to the work table. “Your new fingers will take some getting used to, so before I set the frame in the Nanite tank, I want you to practice using them. Here,” he said as he hefted the barrel up, and dumped a slew of rocks, dirt and slivers of Energon crystals out onto the sorting table. “These are the final scrapings from the mine in the Yukon. I need you to remove all of the rubble and debris before we melt the crystals down.”

Knock Out stared at the pile of dirt on the table before he blinked back to Ratchet. So this was it, then? Right back to where he started, sorting Energon crystals, only now he’d be doing it for at least the next two vorns. Damn. “Is this part of that ‘work release program’ you all mentioned at my sentencing?”

“For now,” Ratchet said as he set the empty barrel down, though he was already scheming up a different sort of job for the ex-‘Con, and unlike the keys in his fingers, it had nothing to do with Knock Out’s original function.


	45. A Wrecker's Apology

Two weeks passed before Ratchet set the date to remove Knock Out’s T-cog. He gave Knock Out plenty of time to get used to the new frame and fingers of his left servo before running the Energon lines, allowing the Nanites to rebuild the protoflesh around everything, and reattaching it all so that Knock Out finally had a complete servo in place, though Ratchet did not reaffix any new armor plating, or replace the drill that had once occupied the space in Knock Out’s forearm. There was no need for that anymore.

Ratchet performed the surgery early one morning, after the other bots had left for the mines and while he was certain that all the humans were either at work or attending school. So that he would not be disturbed, he also made sure to lock the Medbay door, something he rarely did.

He had expected at least a little griping from Knock Out, though the mech gave him none, and Ratchet found he was in fact wary of Knock Out’s passive willingness to go under the knife, though he suspected it was only because Knock Out was looking forward to the injections. That was not something Ratchet enjoyed being the enabler of, but the deed had to be done, so he made the necessary adjustments to Knock Out’s FIM chip settings and got to work.

Before he removed the T-cog, and since he had to put Knock Out under for the procedure anyway, Ratchet spent the first solid hour preforming all the routine check-ups and maintenance on Knock Out that he assumed the ex-‘Con probably had not had in mega-cycles. In the end, he wound up spending more time tweaking Knock Out’s spinal struts, realigning his steering cables and flushing his fuel lines than actually removing the T-cog itself. Time got away from Ratchet quite easily when he wasn’t in a hurry or under the pressure of the mech on his medslab possibly dying if he didn’t act quickly enough. He considered non-emergent surgeries like this a luxury to perform, so rare had they become in the past four-million mega-cycles.

Ratchet was just finishing the final weld on Knock Out’s protoflesh, his T-cog now suspended in a glass canister of propex solution on the counter, when he heard the Medbay door open behind him, and his optics went wide when he realized that the door would, of course, sill open for First Aid, as the sensors would release the locking mechanisms of the door to any Medic with the proper clearance.

“Primus, dammit,” Ratchet quietly muttered to himself as he shook his head and tried to speed the weld along. The mining crew wasn’t due back for another three hours, by his chronometer. He paused then and went completely still, thinking that perhaps First Aid was too busy to notice him sitting there, but he knew that was a ridiculous thing to hope for, and he cringed as he heard First Aid’s footsteps coming up behind him.

“Well, the local mine over in Nelson was collapsed when we got there, it must have happened overnight. We just spent the past four hours trying to dig it out and…” First Aid was saying once he spotted Ratchet, though he cut himself short when he saw Knock Out on the medslab, Ratchet hovering over an unfinished weld, and the shiny T-cog in the glass cannister nearby. Suddenly his tone changed. “Ratchet, _what are you doing?”_

Pulsing annoyance from his EM field, Ratchet hunched his shoulders a bit as he clicked his servo-integrated welding torch back on and resumed the repair. “What he asked me to do,” he replied, and did not elaborate further.

“ _What?”_ First Aid stepped beside the medslab so that he could look Ratchet in the optics, or at least in their general direction, as Ratchet had donned his pair of welding goggles to complete the task, and was focused on what he was doing and not on his angry subordinate beside him. _“_ Why!? And you’re _doing_ it!?”

“It’s complicated, First Aid, and I’ll remind you of _the oath that you took_ concerning doctor-patient _confidentiality.”_

For two nano-klicks, First Aid did not understand. He gaped from Ratchet to the T-cog, then back, clearly confused, until everything suddenly made sense, and the moment he figured it out, a wave of anger spread from his signature that Ratchet hadn’t felt in stellar-cycles. “You’re gonna give it to ‘Bee, aren’t you?” First Aid asked, his fists clenching at his sides. He couldn’t believe it. “What the _fuck,_ Ratchet!?”

Ratchet knew First Aid rarely swore, let alone in English, but the bot’s moral outrage was starting to piss Ratchet off. He shut the welding torch off again as he sat up straighter on his stool, removed the dark-tinted goggles from his optics to place them on his forehelm, and sent First Aid the worst “Ratchet glare” he had in his arsenal. “You need to tone it down and get yourself _back in line,_ or I swear to Primus, I’ll—”

The comm station on the other side of the Medbay suddenly chimed to life, the words “INCOMING TRANSMISSION” in Cybertronian script pulsing on the red screen. Ratchet and First Aid both whipped their heads around to blink at the noise before glaring back to each other.

”Get that,” Ratchet ordered before he tugged his goggles back down over his optics and got back to work.

First Aid grit his denta behind his mask before he stalked over to the comm station, his narrowed optics noting the caller’s destination was the Nemesis Medbay. He slammed the receiver button, perhaps a little too hard, to open the frequency before speaking. “Go ahead, Pharma,” he said, though that was not the mech that popped up on the video screen to greet him.

“Sorry, it’s me,” said Fixit apologetically. “We’ve got a problem here. Decepticon forces attacked just outside of New Iacon about forty-five klicks ago and the Medbay here is at full capacity. I was hoping I could send some of the wounded your way. Can you Bridge over with a MARB for transport?”

His anger instantly forgotten, First Aid’s optics went wide before he gave a quick nod. “Of course. We’ll start prepping here and I’ll be right over. How many do we need to take?”

“Just two. I’m sending you their injury reports now,” said Fixit. “I’m sorry to have to ask you for help, but Pharma had to leave for Delphi this morning unexpectedly. The Neutrals have Medics that have been helping out here to take his place, but we’re still swamped.”

“Oh,” First Aid blinked to the mention of his Combinermate, and for the first time ever, he felt suddenly angry and hurt by the mech’s actions. Pharma had left for Delphi and he hadn’t even said good-bye? What was _that_ about? “Okay,” First Aid quickly shook those feelings away as he blinked back to Fixit on the screen, “okay, I’ll be right over.”

“Thanks. Fixit out.”

“Those Goddamn Decepticons have some horrible timing,” Ratchet muttered from his stool as sparks from his welding torch crackled around him.

First Aid was already tugging the MARB from its charging bay in the corner and grabbing a med kit from the storage bins when he looked back to Ratchet, and even though he was livid at what Ratchet was doing, he still swallowed that all down and offered his assistance. “We’re gonna need the Medslab he’s on,” First Aid nodded to Knock Out’s prone form. “Do you want me to finish up on him and you can Bridge over instead? I don’t mind.”

“No, I’m almost done here,” Ratchet said with a huff of annoyance at being rushed. He waved with his non-transformed hand, “Go.”

“Alright,” First Aid quickly finished grabbing supplies and then pushed the MARB out of the Medbay as he headed for the Bridge controls. His yelling match with Ratchet over his perceived unethical behavior would have to wait.

Ratchet rapidly and expertly completed the weld over the incision in Knock Out’s right side and removed his goggles, though when he transformed his servo from the welding torch back into his hand, he was forced to pause mid-transformation when his fingers seized up, and he cursed his old age as he slammed his arm on the side counter. “C’mon! You piece of slag,” he grumbled as the transformation finally completed, and he rubbed at his wrist and the pain there for a moment before he went about bringing Knock Out back online.

Naloxodrone was supposed to be administered slowly. The drug’s ability to reverse the effects of sedatives sent through a bot’s system should have been so gentle that the changes were barely perceptible, so that the bot would awaken as though from a simple power down. There was, unfortunately, no time for that with incoming wounded, so Ratchet slammed the plunger of the Naloxodrone dose into Knock Out’s Energon line with his thumb as quickly as he thought he could get away with without sending the mech’s spark into an abnormal cadence.

The sensation of being completely unconscious one klick to wide awake the next was so sudden that Knock Out literally bolted upright on the medslab with a gasp as he clutched a hand to his chest plates, his optics going wide for a moment before he realized where he was and what had just happened, and he quickly pressed his fingers to his helm. “Ugh, what the _hell,_ mech!?” he glared to Ratchet, who was already disconnecting the Energon line from Knock Out’s servo. “A little heavy-handed on the Nalox much!? Primus.”

“I’m sorry to bring you back online so quickly, but we need the medslab.”

Knock Out was still trying to shake the dizziness away from his head when he blinked to Ratchet’s words, and he instantly picked up on the worry from other mech’s signature. “Why?”

“The Nemesis has an overflow of patients that need repairs,” Ratchet said as he coiled the Engeron line and set it aside.

“What happened?”

“There was an attack.”

Knock Out went still at that, and he felt his spark suddenly sink in his chassis. “Decepticons?” he asked, and when Ratchet did not immediately respond, he glared. “Ratchet, was it Decepticons?”

“…Yes,” Ratchet finally muttered as he went about cleaning up around the medslab, hiding the T-cog in the cannister in a locked cabinet, and then brought up his servo screen so that he could check the injury reports Fixit had sent.

Venting a sigh of frustration to that, Knock Out stared at his peds. Why had the Decepticons attacked? Were they after him, and if they were, had it been to free him, or kill him? Who had it been, and which one of them had been leading the charge? Maybe they weren’t after him at all? Maybe they were simply attacking to try and regain control of the ship? Did that mean the war was back on, now? All of those questions and more suddenly swarmed through Knock Out’s mind, but the thought of incoming wounded grounded him back in reality, as it had always had the ability to do. Yes, Knock Out was prone to being overwhelmed by his own issues, but he’d always been able to set them aside when another bot’s life was at stake, whether that was the healthy thing to do or not.

Knock Out cringed as he rubbed at his optics, trying to refocus his mind. “Give me...five klicks and I can help you.”

“Absolutely not,” said Ratchet as he closed his servo screen.

“If there are any flyers in the bunch, you won’t know what you’re doing.”

Ratchet shook his head as he helped Knock Out stand from the medslab. “I’m taking you back to your cell, I can handle the flyers.” They took one step forward before Ratchet stopped them dead in their tracks as both spotted Wheeljack in the entryway, a broken and bleeding Vehicon in his servos.

“Ratch’, I’m sorry,” Wheeljack said as he entered the Medbay, looking around for where to place the mech he was carrying. “First Aid told me to just run through the Bridge with this one, he said there was no time to—”

“Primus, put him there,” Ratchet said as he pointed to the medslab closest to the door, and left Knock Out’s side to meet Wheeljack at the berth where he laid the broken Vehicon down. Ratchet quickly scanned the Vehicon with the diagnostic beam from his servo screen before stepping to the cabinets where he immediately began to pull out supplies.

“Do you need any help?” Wheeljack asked, but when Ratchet nodded and then motioned him over to stand beside him, Wheeljack was not expecting the Medic to lean close and whisper into his audial as he glared.

“You can help me by escorting Knock Out back to his cell, and believe me when I say that if you don’t use this opportunity to give him the apology that you _owe him,_ I swear to Primus, I will make your post-war life very, _very_ difficult. Do you understand?” Ratchet said, his faceplates a mere inch from Wheeljack’s as he held the other mech’s gaze.

Wheeljack kept his gaze locked on Ratchet’s for only a nano-klick before he quickly looked away, scowling at the floor for a moment before finally muttering his response. “ _Fine_.” Knowing better than to mess with Ratchet, Wheeljack stepped away from him and started for the exit. It was one thing to be on the Commander’s bad side, but to be on the Medic’s bad side was not a game Wheeljack liked to play. Not that he thought Ratchet would ever harm him intentionally, but the mech was old, and highly influential amongst the rest of the Autobots, perhaps even more so than Prowl. It was best to stay in Ratchet’s good graces.

“Knock Out,” Ratchet said over his shoulder between rummaging through the cabinets and drawers, “Wheeljack will take you back to your cell.”

Knock Out’s optics went wide to that before looking between the two Autobots. That sounded like a _horrible_ idea. “Ratchet, _please_ let me stay,” he began, “I can _help_ you. I can hand you tools, I can pull supplies, I can—”

“You refusing my orders doesn’t fall under ‘good behavior’, so I suggest you do as I say,” Ratchet said before he turned his back to Knock Out, and he did not catch the ex-‘Con’s glare before he moved to meet Wheeljack at the door.

Having come straight from school, Rafael walked through the human-sized door into the hangar of Unit E and saw two things: The Spacebridge lit up in a swirl of green and aqua light as First Aid came rushing through it pushing a MARB with an injured bot, whose designation Rafael did not know, and Wheeljack leading Knock Out away from the Medbay, the bot’s forms just disappearing down the hallway as they walked towards the lift. Staring for a moment, Rafael watched the Spacebridge close and heard the timbre of First Aid and Ratchet’s vocalizers as they said something to one another in Cybertronian, though from where Rafael stood in the hangar, he could not make out the words as the wide door to the Medbay closed behind First Aid.

Not wanting to get in the way though still curious about what was going on with the injured bot, Rafael knew his questions would have to wait until the two Medics weren’t busy saving lives, so he opted to go running after Wheeljack and Knock Out instead, to see if they had any answers. But when he got close enough to them and was able to decipher what _they_ were talking about, he quickly decided to remain silent as he followed undetected.

“If you think that the Council declarin’ that yer worthy of wearin’ the ‘Bot badge once you serve yer sentence is all its gonna take for you ta gain acceptance around here, you got another thing comin’, mech,” said Wheeljack as he escorted Knock Out into the lift. “See, me an’ Bulkhead, _we_ know the _real_ you. Once a ‘Con, _always_ a ‘Con. Ain’t no couple’a vorns behind bars gonna change _that.”_

When the two giant bots both turned around once inside the lift, Rafael was quick to duck into the stairwell just off the hallway. He paused at the landing, wondering if he’d heard the Cybertronian words correctly before he suddenly took off down the stairs. Knowing the lift moved slowly, Rafael easily beat it down to the first sub-level of the building, and he quickly clambered up the stack of tires by the supply room door and dropped down into the hole in the middle before going completely still. It took a full two minutes before the lift screeched to a halt and the wide doors finally opened at the end of the hallway, and Rafael watched as Wheeljack made Knock Out step out first as he led him towards the open cell.

 “…was some trial, huh?” Wheeljack was saying as he followed after the ex-‘Con _very_ closely. “Lotta shit revealed, lotta new information. I noticed how you failed ta mention how you _found_ yer Conjux, by the way. Where you _took_ him from.”

They were just past the stack of tires and not yet fully in front of the cell when Knock Out stopped dead in his tracks at Wheeljack’s words, Wheeljack purposefully bumping into him from behind, though he definitely added some extra weight to his “bump”, and Knock Out was forced to stumbled forward a few paces before he turned to glare back at the other mech. Rafael saw the red of Knock Out’s optics flare brightly in anger before he stalked back up to Wheeljack and got right up in his faceplates despite being half a meter shorter, as though he was daring the Autobot to strike him again, which Rafael thought was a _very_ bad move.

“I think you’re forgetting Wrecker Rule Number Three, Wheeljack,” Knock Out hissed through clenched denta, “‘Don’t make it personal’.”

Wheeljack instantly slammed his head forwards with the intention of butting forehelms with Knock Out, but having known Wheeljack and his fighting style for as long as he had, Knock Out had anticipated the move. He easily side-stepped Wheeljack’s advance and used the bot’s own forward momentum to cause him to trip right over the ped Knock Out placed in his path. He had not however, anticipated the speed with which Wheeljack was able to reach back and snag him by a servo on his way down.

Rafael watched wide-eyed from the space between the stacked tires as a tangle of red and white and silver armor plating crashed to the floor, and he felt the shaking floor panels send vibrations right up through his shoes. For a moment there was nothing but grappling servos and the slamming and scraping of metal on metal as each mech fought for the upper hand.

It had been many stellar-cycles since Knock Out had been forced into hand-to-hand combat with any bot, and while he had not forgotten the finer points of how to maneuver a mech into a headlock, physically, he was no longer at the top of his game, and being fresh off the medslab didn’t help any. He pinned Wheeljack to the floor and reached a hand up under the mech’s chest plating to dig the non-pointy fingers of his new left hand into the protoflesh under one of Wheeljack’s hinges, a known, painful pressure point for all bots. Wheeljack’s yelp of pain quickly turned into a yell of anger as he managed to fling his servo back and snag Knock Out around the neck before dragging him off his back, down to his side and kicking him in chest, sending Knock Out’s frame slamming against the wall opposite the cell.

Knock Out’s rage made it easy for him to ignore the pain all that caused, and he tried to quickly get back onto his peds, but Wheeljack was on top of him in a flash. This time Knock Out could not shift his hands or servos fast enough to wiggle free from Wheeljack’s grip, and he was forced to pull air into his vents as Wheeljack twisted his new left arm painfully up and against his back at an unnatural angle.

Finally managing to pin Knock Out under him, Wheeljack leaned with nearly all of his weight onto Knock Out’s left arm, his legs locked around the other bot’s and the elbow of his right servo leaning heavily against the back of Knock Out’s neck as he bent his helm to yell right in Knock Out’s face, which he now had effectively shoved against the floor. Ratchet wanted him to apologize, Bumblebee wanted him to apologize, Ultra Magnus wanted him to apologize. _Fine,_ he would, but if he was going to apologize for _his_ actions, then Primus dammit, Knock Out was going to apologize for his too. No one ever said they couldn’t apologize the Wrecker way.

“You _took_ him from us!” Wheeljack shouted, “Don’t you fraggin’ deny that shit, you _took_ him!”

“I didn’t _take_ him from you!” Knock Out yelled right back, his anger-filled, emotionally charged signature and Wheeljack’s one and the same as he struggled to free himself. “Primus it was _his_ idea to leave!”

“Breakdown was a Wrecker, he shoulda _stayed_ with the Wreckers! Why the frag he liked yer arrogant, red-pansy aft, I _never_ understood! It didn’t make sense when he ran off with you to go Neutral, an’ it made even _less_ sense when you dragged him over to the ‘Con side!” Wheeljack yelled into Knock Out’s left audial. ”’Cause if he hadn’t gone with you, there’s a real chance he might still be here today, _wouldn’t you agree?_ Or has that thought never crossed yer mind!?”

“…Wheeljack,” Knock Out managed to mumble between trying not to gasp in pain as his left arm was being practically wrenched from its new socket joint, but Wheeljack would not let him finish his sentence as he yanked on his arm a bit more, causing Knock Out to turn his face into the floor as he cringed.

 “Oh, but of _course_ it’s crossed yer mind! You know yer the reason he’s dead. It’s all _yer_ fraggin’ fault!” Wheeljack shouted. He had not meant to entertain any emotion other than anger during this “discussion”, so when a sudden wave of sadness washed over him unexpectedly, it took him by surprise. He went suddenly still, as though he was experiencing the feeling for the first time, like he didn’t understand what was happening to him. He loosened his grip on Knock Out’s servo, though he did not release him completely, but Knock Out had gone suddenly still as well as he felt the sorrow flooding from Wheeljack’s signature, and he was just as surprised by it.

Several times as he watched Knock Out and Wheeljack pummel each other, Rafael wondered whether he ought to make himself known, to climb up out of the tires and yell at them to stop. Although he struggled through the translations, he had understood the majority of the Cybertronian words the two bots were shouting at one another. He knew Wheeljack had a long-standing hatred of Knock Out, well-beyond the hatred of him simply being a Decepticon, but up until that point, Rafael had never truly known why. Now it all suddenly made sense, though Rafael was not sure he agreed with Wheeljack. He noticed however, that despite all the yelling and pushing and shoving, Wheeljack never once reached for the swords strapped to his back, and Knock Out never once attempted to use the pointed fingers of his right hand to claw Wheeljack’s frame. Clearly, they weren’t attempting to outright kill each other, but still, Rafael stood poised inside the tires, ready to spring from them at any moment, not that he was sure they would stop on account of his presence, and he was very aware that he could also get squashed in the process if he wasn’t careful.

Wheeljack finally released Knock Out’s left arm from the angled hold to quickly wipe the trails of optic wash from his face that he’d only just realized were there, but he snagged Knock Out’s wrist again and pined it down to the floor by Knock Out’s face as he growled into his audial, and he did not care that his vocalizer was laced with static. “You son of a glitch! He was too _good_ for you, but you know that _too,_ don’t you? You led him to his _death!_ Where’s the fraggin’ apology fer all of _that!?”_

“I didn’t _mean_ to! I’m _sorry!_ Primus, you _know_ I didn’t _want_ him dead! I’m _sorry!_ ” Knock Out, of course, had always felt somewhat responsible for Breakdown’s death. Many times, he had thought exactly as Wheeljack stated, that the mech might not be dead today if they had not joined the Decepticons together. He was quite certain that he would carry that guilt around forever, amongst all the other things he felt guilty about, and now, lying there pinned to the floor by Wheeljack, he found himself suddenly wishing the mech would just end it all for him right there. Would that really be so bad? The Autobots had their Decepticon serving time in the name of the entire faction; Bumblebee would get his T-cog; Knock Out had nothing else to offer this plane of existence.

Shuttering his optics, Knock Out vented a sigh as he gave up trying to free himself from Wheeljack’s hold. He knew the mech wanted him dead and that they’d both been holding back. It wouldn’t take much to goad Wheeljack into drawing one of those swords. “I’m sorry,” Knock Out repeated, “I’m _sorry._ You know that I’d bring him back if I could, but I _can’t._ I fucked up. I really, _really_ fucked up,” he said, swallowing hard as a shiver ran through his frame at the thought of deactivating. He still feared it, despite now having a genuine desire for it. It was that fear that had lately kept him from acting on those thoughts himself and it was far, far easier to convince a wild mech like Wheeljack to do the deed for him. “So…so why don’t you do us both a favor and just _end this_ , and we can all move on.”

Wheeljack was so tempted by what Knock Out was insinuating. With Knock Out immobilized beneath him and no longer struggling, he _could_ end this in a matter of nano-klicks. Wheeljack clenched his jaw, cycling and venting air through his filters as many mega-cycles of rage and buried sadness raced through his processor and emanated from his signature. He tightened his grip around Knock Out’s wrist and lowered his helm as another streak of wash ran from his optics. He sat there and listed to the sounds of their engines revving and vans whirring and had a silent battle with himself over what he _wanted_ to do and what was the _right thing_ to do. In the end, he forced himself to take the high road, and leaned back down to growl in Knock Out’s face. “You ain’t worth the time I’d have ta serve fer killin’ yer pathetic aft.”

“ _Fine,”_ Knock Out said as he opened his optics once more to glare at Wheeljack’s hand pinning his servo to the floor, and there was a small pulse of relief in his EM field at Wheeljack’s choice, despite what he had thought was his true desire. He had not expected his own tears either, but they were there when he lifted his optic shutters, and he did not care if Wheeljack saw them. “Then can we be _done_ with this now? _You win,_ okay? Can we call it even?”

“Done? Yes. _Even?”_ Wheeljack said as he sat up once more, and removed his servo from the back of Knock Out’s neck to wipe his own tears away again, lest Knock Out notice. _“Never_. Although I will say this has been pretty satisfyin’. S’too bad we can’t make it a regular thing,” he said, then cleared his vocalizer and tilted his head from side to side to correct a few cables in his neck that felt out of place, and he reigned in his EM field as though the grief had never even been there. “Well, I should get back. Oh yeah,” he gave a final glare down to Knock Out before making a fist and slamming it into Knock Out’s right side, just below his chest plates, _“sorry_ about the rocket,” he growled, then raised a brow as he glanced to his fist. “Huh, they were right, apologizin’ _does_ feel good. Imagine that,” and he raised his fist to punch it into Knock Out’s side again. He knew that if he left any marks on the mech, Ratchet would notice, but there were plenty of places one could punch a bot without leaving any visible traces of it. And when Knock Out groaned at the second hit, Wheeljack once again leaned close to hiss in his audial. “Looks like _you_ forgot Wrecker Rule Number Six: Never show any sign of weakness’.”

“STOP!” Rafael had finally seen and heard enough. He managed to climb all the way out of the tires and run towards the pair before either of them looked up at his shout. He supposed he should have said something sooner, when Wheeljack went eerily still at Knock Out’s request, Rafael didn’t believe Wheeljack would do it. But now the mech was just being cruel, hitting Knock Out and causing him pain when he’d clearly given up. Rafael had always been wary of Wheeljack’s anger, and he had always silently thought to himself that the mech was a bit of a bully, which he never mentioned to the other humans, because Miko thought Wheeljack was a badass, and Jack seemed to not care one way or the other. He was not sure what would happen now, as he ran out to the two bots, but Rafael refused to stand by and let Wheeljack harm anyone for fun, even an ex-‘Con. “Leave him alone!” he yelled, glaring up at Wheeljack, who looked suddenly startled. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you!?”

Wheeljack’s spark skipped a pulse when he saw the human come running from seemingly out of nowhere. He knew Rafael understood more about their culture and language than the other two children, and he knew that Rafael was Ratchet’s favorite. How many Cybertronian words had the kid deciphered just now, and how much of what he had seen would he go running to tell the old Medic? Wheeljack sat frozen for a moment before he gave a little smirk. Teenage human males were all about the occasional friendly sparring match, right? He could charm his way through this. “Aww, we were just messin’ around, Raf,” he said, switching his vocalizations to human English.

“You’re _hurting_ him!” Rafael gestured to Knock Out’s prone form with both hands.

“Ain’t nobody hurt,” Wheeljack muttered as he pushed himself up off of Knock Out before grabbing him by the arm and chassis to tug him back up to his peds as well. Then he quickly shoved Knock Out into the cell and activated the metal bars to lock him in. “Knock Out’s just a…whadda y’all call it here, again? A ‘pussy’?” Wheeljack canted his head to one side as he eyed the human at his peds. “Is it ‘pussy’ or ‘wussy’? I can never remember.”

“You stay the fuck away from him!” Rafael yelled. “Just because he’s locked up now doesn’t mean you get to treat him like that!”

Wheeljack narrowed his optics down to Rafael before he turned to glare at Knock Out, who was clutching one hand to his side as he crouched beside the recharge slab, his gaze flicking back and forth between the Autobot and the human. “Yer gonna let this human _child_ come to yer defense, Knock Out?”

“You got a _problem_ with humans all of a sudden, man?” Rafael shouted as he stepped to Wheeljack with clenched fists, like the bot didn’t stand nearly twenty feet above him.

“Are you fuckin’ _kiddin’_ me with this right now?” Wheeljack blinked at the nerve this kid suddenly had. And here he had always taken Rafael for a scrawny little thing. But since it appeared Rafael was not taking _his_ side, now Wheeljack changed his tactics as he growled down to the human. “I could crush _six_ of you under _one ped!”_ he yelled menacingly as he lifted a leg and brought that one ped slamming down into the floor beside Rafael, just close enough to remind him who was the bigger mech.

Rafael had never been on the receiving end of Wheeljack’s anger, and he knew he’d bitten off more than he could chew in attempting to scare him off, but he had not expected the bot to threaten him with violence. Rafael saw the bottom of the ped coming down and he darted between the bars of the cell and ducked behind one of Knock Out’s peds as Wheeljack’s came crashing down on the metal flooring. Setting a hand on the treads of Knock Out’s tire, Rafael peeked out from behind it with narrowed eyes as he looked back to Wheeljack.

“Fuck you both,” Wheeljack said with a sneer before he stomped down the hallway and straight onto the lift, which eventually carried him back up to ground level.

His courage restored once Wheeljack was no longer so close, Rafael ran back to the bars to look out into the hallway to make sure the mech wasn’t coming back, then turned back to Knock Out. “Are you okay?”

Knock Out froze the moment Rafael entered the cell. He had seen the way the Autobots went still whenever the humans were on the move. They were little and easy to lose track of if you weren’t watching them, and Knock Out had not been used to _caring_ whether or not they got crushed underfoot, regardless of the fact he had never actually killed any that way. So he went as still as a statue when Rafael ran literally underneath him and around his peds, though he did wince when Wheeljack slammed his ped down beside the bars. Once the mech was gone however, and Rafael had backed off, Knock Out leaned back against the wall as he sat on the floor and eyed the human like he was insane. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“He was _punching_ you!”

“He was right, we were just messing around.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Rafael yelled as he pointed a finger up at Knock Out. “I understood _every word_ you guys said! Do you think I’m stupid!?”

Knock Out silently cursed the teen’s ability to understand their language, but he shook his head at the question before he winced at the pain in his side. “I’m pretty sure you’re the smartest human on the planet, actually.”

“Then don’t lie to me!”

“Alright!” Knock Out held up a hand, not wanting a repeat of another human screaming at him for five nano-klicks about what a horrible mech he was. “Alright, _I’m sorry!”_

“I think you’re bleeding,” Rafael said as he eyed the faint traces of Energon on Knock Out’s fingers, and he watched as Knock Out quickly peered down at his side before muttering.

Had Wheeljack known Ratchet was going to remove his T-cog and that’s why he went for the hit there, practically on top of the fresh weld? Knock Out could not fathom how the mech would have been able to tell, but now the weld was less-than-perfect, and Knock Out cringed as he wiped the small leak of Energon away with his fingers. “Goddammit, Wheeljack.”

“I’m telling Ratchet,” Rafael said with a shrug, like no one had a say in the matter, and he turned to go.

“NO!” Knock Out quickly yelled after him. He did not want to reach out and grab the human, but he did not want him to go crying to Ratchet, either. “Wait! Rafael, wait. Don’t tell him anything, I’ll be fine, really. It’s barely a leak. Besides, he’s busy working on the bot Wheeljack brought in from Cybertron. You shouldn’t bother him.”

Pausing at the bars, Rafael turned to look at Knock Out once more. He definitely did not want to bother Ratchet when he was busy working, and suddenly he remembered why he had gone after Wheeljack and Knock Out to begin with. “I saw First Aid Bridging through with another bot on my way in. What happened?”

Knock Out vented a sigh of relief that he had managed to stop Rafael from leaving, at least for the moment. “Decepticons,” he said, and now his mind went back to all of the questions that had popped up when he’d heard the news. “Apparently some attacked the city. That’s all Ratchet would tell me.”

Rafael’s brows shot up to that, worry now written all over his features. “Does that mean the war’s restarting?”

“…I don’t know,” Knock Out shook his head before hanging it low, and he cringed again as he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “I hope not.”

Rafael watched Knock Out for a moment before he glared again. It was probably too soon to speculate on the restart of the war, but the worry of what that might mean, that all of the Autobots would leave Earth again, reignited that old fear in the pit of his stomach. “I’m telling him whenever he’s done working up there,” he said, “Ratchet needs to know what Wheeljack did,”

“No, he doesn’t,” Knock Out quickly looked back up to focus his optics on Rafael. “Look, Wheeljack had his say, it’s fine, it’s over. We worked things out.”

“You call _that_ working things out!?”

“That’s how Wreckers work things out,” Knock Out said as he slowly stood, though only enough so that he could sit down on the recharge slab.

Recalling the “discussion” he had just witnessed, Rafael slowly eyed Knock Out up and down, like he was trying to imagine the bot in an entirely different light. “You were a Wrecker?”

Knock Out, who now sat hunched over in pain, flicked his gaze to Rafael. “I was one of their Medics, once, as a Neutral, not an Autobot. I didn’t work with them for very long. I wasn’t really one of them.”

“You met Breakdown while you were with them, though.”

Damn, the kid really _had_ understood them. Knock Out shifted his gaze back to the floor before nodding in silence.

“Wheeljack is wrong. It’s not your fault he died,” Rafael offered, but he was not surprised when Knock Out said nothing in response. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Knock Out scoffed to that, and he raised a hand to rub at his forehelm as that old, familiar ache started back up in his temples. Life had just become too much to process anymore, and his circuitry was barely keeping up. _“Everything_ is my fault whether I believe it or not.”

“You were gonna let him kill you,” Rafael said with a glare. “You shouldn’t be thinking like that. What if he changes his mind and comes back?”

“He won’t come back,” Knock Out vented a sigh as he pressed his palms against his shuttered optics. “I gave him the option, he didn’t take it, so it’s done.”

“If that’s ‘the Wrecker way’, that’s pretty fucked up.”

“It’s the only way he does things, the only way he _respects_ things,” Knock Out said, still leaning his head in his hands. “Don’t tell Ratchet. He doesn’t need to know, and he wouldn’t understand, you _know_ he wouldn’t. He has enough slag to deal with,” he said, silently hoping that his words would appeal to Rafael’s sense of not wanting to burden the old Medic with issues that had already been settled.

And Rafael, knowing full well how grumpy Ratchet seemed with the Autobots as of late, and how much his old age seemed to be suddenly catching up with him (for he had seen the mech’s hands freeze up too, just like the rest of them had), finally agreed with Knock Out’s request, and he nodded as he shifted his gaze to floor.

“Okay, you’re right. I won’t tell.”


	46. A T-Cog

It only took a week for Knock Out to start feeling the effects of the missing T-cog. He took it personally, as though his own mind was offending him by being so bothered by it, like the T-cog hadn’t already been sitting unused and dormant inside his frame for stellar-cycles. Knock Out tried his best to ignore it, like he did with all the other slag he was keeping from his processor, but this was somehow different, and eerily similar to the feelings of loss he so often felt for Breakdown: A _piece_ of him was missing.

The small band of Decepticons that had attacked New Iacon had all been killed during the skirmish. With enough pestering, Ratchet had finally given Knock Out their designations, but Knock Out had recognized none of them.

Thanks to Fixit, the Neutral Medics, and Ratchet and First Aid, the injured Autobots and Neutrals that had defended the city would survive their wounds, however, while the two bots from Cybertron were recovering in the Medbay on Earth, Knock Out was confined to his cell, a fact which he honestly did not mind. Sorting and sifting through dirt for Energon crystals had become so ingrained in his brain node that he dreamt of it in sleeper mode now, as though the task was a new nightmare to haunt him.

First Aid stopped by frequently, when he was not out on the mining expeditions, always with a new story to tell about whatever new mine they were clearing, or what funny thing the Vehicons had said or done, or the latest news from Cybertron. Occasionally, he would try to get Knock Out to talk, to engage in conversation beyond just acknowledging First Aid’s presence or the narrative he was giving, but Knock Out never gave him a response beyond a shrug or a shake of his head to indicate that he wasn’t in the mood. That did not stop First Aid from trying, though. The mech was there every cycle at least once, if not multiple times, to bring Knock Out his rations, to ask him how he was doing, and always Knock Out said he was fine, that he did not want to talk, but he always made sure to thank First Aid for the Energon.

Bumblebee too, frequently stopped by to check up on him, but he was far briefer with his questions than First Aid, and his responses more stern, as though he were all business. Knock Out supposed the mech was angry with him for requesting spark extraction at the trial, but he never asked, because he honestly did not care what Bumblebee thought of it anymore.

With nothing better to do with his time, Knock Out found himself drifting offline far more than usual, and he was not opposed to it, as even his false recalls were preferable to the guilt and sense of loss he felt when he was awake. But the visitor that had become more frequent that surprised Knock Out the most was Rafael. One Saturday morning, Knock Out awoke to the sounds of the tapping of a keyboard in his cell. He shifted just enough on his recharge slab to peek over the edge to see the teenager sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his laptop, his back to the slab. Knock Out didn’t ask Rafael why he was there, he simply rolled over and sunk back into sleeper mode, and by the time he awoke once more that afternoon, the human was gone. But then the kid was there again another morning, and then once on a different cycle in the afternoon.

Eventually, the human’s presence in Knock Out’s cell when he woke up bothered him enough that one cycle in early December, he looked over the edge of the slab and finally said something about it.

“What are you _doing_ down here _?”_

“Homework,” Rafael said without turning around as he continued to type on his laptop.

“You’re choosing to do your homework in a jail cell?”

“It’s quiet down here, except when you talk in your sleep.”

Knock Out narrowed his optics to that, though he noticed the kid wasn’t mocking him for it. “Does Ratchet know you’re down here?”

“I dunno, maybe? I don’t care either way.”

Such a statement from Rafael was odd, even Knock Out knew that. The kid suddenly not caring what Ratchet thought of him or his actions was highly suspect, and an indicator that something else was going on. Knock Out shifted to prop himself up on his elbows now as he eyed the human suspiciously. “What are you _really_ doing down here, Rafael? Does Ratchet have you running some sort of scan on me while I’m offline, or something?”

“No, I really am doing homework,” Rafael replied.

Knock Out refocused his optical lenses on the tiny screen of Rafael’s laptop to read the information there, and realized it was in fact some sort of lesson plan regarding the American Civil War. He eyed the back of Rafael’s head, covered by the hood he had pulled up over it from his sweatshirt, for a moment before flicking his gaze around the rest of the cell. “Your choice of a study lounge is completely illogical. We’re twenty feet below ground, your little data pad there probably can’t even get an internet signal, and it’s barely forty degrees Fahrenheit. Isn’t that cold for a human?”

“I don’t mind.”

“I can see you shivering. Seriously, what are you doing down here? What’s _wrong_ with you? Did something happen with Ratchet? This is the fourth time I’ve woken up with you in here in a half a deca-…in almost three weeks,” Knock Out said, pausing to change his wording so that Rafael understood the time reference.

“I _know_ how many weeks a deca-cycle is,” Rafael said as he rolled his eyes and finally glanced over his shoulder and up to Knock Out.

“Oh, well _good for you,”_ Knock Out said with a bit of sarcasm as he repeated the question. “Why do you keep coming down here?”

Rafael said nothing as he held Knock Out’s gaze, though he suddenly looked away as the sound of the lift activating at the end of the hallway got his attention. Setting his laptop aside, he quickly got to his feet and moved to stand between the cell bars, and he stared down the corridor as though waiting for something.

Knock Out had been around humans enough to recognize when they were activating their high-alert sensors or whatever they called it, so when he saw Rafael doing as much, he pushed himself up from the slab and stepped to the cell bars as well, and he raised a brow as he too looked down the empty hallway before glancing down to the kid. “What is it? What do you see?”

Rafael waited until the lift had passed their floor entirely before he moved back to his laptop, and he could not help but shiver again as he sat down on the cold metal floor. “Nothing.”

Watching Rafael tug his hands into the sleeves of his sweatshirt in an attempt to ward off the cold, Knock Out rolled his optics as he stepped back to the slab, but instead of sitting back down, he leaned over and scooped Rafael up in one hand as carefully as he could. He didn’t really want to touch the human, but he felt he had no choice. “Pick up your things,” he ordered as he dangled Rafael nearly upside down over his laptop and backpack, which Rafael slowly reached down to grab with both hands. Then Knock Out lifted him high into the air and set him down on the recharge slab before sitting down himself, though he laid back down and turned his back to the human immediately, giving him way more room on the slab than necessary, like he was afraid to get too close. “It’s warmer up here, off the floor. The charge won’t harm your frame. You don’t want to tell me what you’re doing down here, _fine,_ but if you freeze to death while you’re doing it, they’ll blame it on _me,_ so _try_ to stay alive, for _my_ sake, alright?” Knock Out turned just enough to send a glaring red optic over his shoulder to Rafael. “I’ve got enough problems without adding a dead human to the list.”

Rafael had gone rigid in Knock Out’s grip, and for one moment, he was suddenly afraid the ex-‘Con might fling him across the room to his death. In hindsight, he realized he still ought to fear Knock Out, but that thought came too late once the pointy fingers were wrapped around his waist. He tried not to vocalize the discomfort of being set down onto the slab a bit too rough, but the bot was right, it was easily fifteen degrees warmer on the slab, twenty if one counted each time Knock Out cycled air through his ventilation systems.

Standing still for a moment and clutching his laptop and bag to his chest, Rafael watched Knock Out’s seemingly massive frame settle back down. He had never been this close to the ex-‘Con before by himself. Always Ratchet, or at least the other humans, had been with him, like the time the Nemesis gained sentience and they boarded the ship to steal the Iacon relic information. In such close proximity, and with both shoulder-mounted wheels and axles missing, Rafael could see every single panel of Knock Out’s protoflesh along his back, and the actual, individual light cells that made up the mech’s biolighting that ran the length of his spine. He could see a lot of weld work, too, old scarring from the war, he assumed. They all had it, even the Autobots, and Rafael even noticed one such zig-zagging weld on Knock Out’s side that looked similar to one that Bumblebee had.

Still, despite the size difference, Rafael set his things down and crossed his arms as he glared to Knock Out’s frame. “Y’know, sometimes _talking_ about your problems helps.”

“Oh, _I_ see now,” Knock Out glared to the wall on the opposite side of the cell, “First Aid or Bumblebee put you up to this, is that it? Boy, the Autobots really got to _you,_ didn’t they?”

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?”

“The whole ‘let’s talk it out’ spiel. ‘Let’s discuss our inner feelings’,” Knock Out said in a mocking tone, and he raised his left hand to watch his new three-jointed fingers as he waggled them for a moment. The tips of them were still narrow, and not nearly as blunt and rounded as Ratchet’s or First Aid’s, but they were definitely not sharp or pointy.

Rafael rolled his eyes. “I’m not here because First Aid or Bumblebee said so, and talking about problems is _not_ an Autobot thing, it’s a normal, healthy human being thing, too. They teach it in school.”

“Ahh, no wonder you all get along so well, then.”

“I thought _you_ wanted to be an Autobot?”

“Sure,” Knock Out shrugged, “in five vorns, or _whatever.”_

Rafael opened his mouth to speak again, but he paused as the sounds of the lift moving at the end of the hallway could once again be heard from the cell. He whipped his head around, eyes wide as he strained his ears to listen. This time, the lift stopped on their floor, and the sounds of heavy metal footfalls belonging to a Transformer could be heard tromping down the corridor. Suddenly Agent Fowler’s voice echoed along the hallway, followed by the mechanical vocalizations of Wheeljack’s laughter. The echo distorted Agent Fowler’s words as he spoke again, but the pair never actually made it to the cell, and instead turned off down another stretch of hallway, their voices and the sounds of Wheeljack’s footsteps eventually disappearing.

Knock Out recognized the voices instantly, but he did not care who they belonged to. Slowly turning over onto his back so that he could eye the tiny human beside him, he noticed how Rafael now stood perched on the edge of the slab, his fists clenched like he was ready to attack, and he wondered if the kid perhaps could not hear the voices properly and thought they belonged to someone else: An enemy? MECH? Decepticons? Knock Out did not understand the display of anger he was seeing from Rafael, or maybe it was fear? “That sounded like Wheeljack and Agent Fowler,” he said, watching Rafael’s reaction carefully.

“It was,” said Rafael as he turned back, scowling as he sat down on the slab and pulled his laptop close to him again, “Wheeljack comes here a lot more often, now.”

Ahh, so _that_ was it. Interesting. “Is that why you’ve been down here?” Knock Out asked, and when Rafael merely shrugged, he pressed him further. “Is he being an aft to you?”

“No, he’s being... _nice_ to me,” Rafael said as he looked back up, clearly distrustful of Wheeljack, “and I know he’s faking it.”

“That sounds like Wheeljack, yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll come back down here and hit you again?”

Rolling his optics, Knock Out shifted his gaze up the ceiling. “No. I told you before, he’s had his say, and in that little _pebble-sized_ brain node of his, he’s ‘won’, so he won’t be back. He wins, I lose, and now we can all move on with our lives,” he grumbled, though he blinked when he finally sorted through all of the data he’d just gathered in this brief conversation and in watching Rafael’s reaction every time the lift moved, and he flicked his gaze back to the kid. “…You’re down here because you think you’re _protecting_ me, aren’t you?”

“Wheeljack won’t hurt _me,”_ Rafael pointed to his own chest, looking and sounding as though _he_ was the giant mechanical being, and not caring if his true purpose for being there was now so obvious, “he knows he’ll get in _big_ trouble if he does.”

Knock Out vented a sigh as he slapped his hand over his shuttered optics. Primus, human teenagers were about as misguided as Transformer ones. Worse yet, it appeared none of the Autobots knew the kid thought it was up to _him_ to “protect” Knock Out from what was really a minor threat now. _Dammit, Bumblebee, pay attention to your pet more often!_ “Look,” Knock Out lifted his palm from his optics so that he could glance to Rafael beside him, “that’s very… _thoughtful_ of you, and I _appreciate_ your concern, but it’s not necessary. _”_

“Well _someone_ has to! You won’t do it yourself!”

“I don’t need it, really.”

“Wheeljack is a bully!” Rafael practically shouted, because he’d wanted to say that out loud for _so_ long. “I don’t _like_ him. I kinda never did.”

“You and me both, kid.”

“He never listed to Optimus, and he never listened to Ultra Magnus, and he pushes Bulkhead around,” Rafael shook his head as he looked to his laptop again. “I thought Autobots weren’t supposed to act that way. I thought they were better than that.”

Knock Out could not help notice the sadness with which Rafael spoke those words, and he felt genuinely bad for the human, who was apparently just now realizing that his heroes were far from perfect. Knock Out could remember a time in his own life when he became aware of such similar things on Cybertron, before the war. Innocence lost, that’s what it was, but that was simply a part of growing up. “Nothing is that black and white, not even on Cybertron,” said Knock Out, and he could not think of any other way to describe it better.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Rafael sighed as he stared at the screen of his laptop, “I mean, I _know_ it’s not. It’s just all so much easier when the good guys are _good,_ and the bad guys are _bad,_ like in Saturday morning cartoons, y’know?” And when Knock Out only raised a brow to that, Rafael tried to think of another way to phrase it. “Kid shows. Like, stuff on TV for little kids to watch, so they know the difference between good and bad, and right and wrong. Did they have stuff like that for Sparklings on Cybertron, before the war?”

Knock Out had to dig deep in his memory files for something relatable to what Rafael was talking about, and he finally did recall several such broadcasts meant for the very young, something about a purple Dinobot, and then there was one about Equinoids and their friendship being magic, or something like that. Smokescreen had _loved_ that one. “Yes,” Knock Out said as he eyed his left hand again, “yes, there was something similar.”

Rafael nodded to that, and then watched Knock Out warily for a moment as he dared to use this conversation as a bridge to another topic. “I watched your trial,” he said, and he decided not to mention that he’d in fact recorded it and watched it at least ten times by now in an effort to work on refining his understanding of the Cybertronian language, when Knock Out began eyeing him just as warily. “All that stuff about Sparklings and CNA and…all of that…I didn’t know Transformers could _do_ that. I didn’t know you could be parents. Ratchet and the others, they never mentioned _any_ of that to me. It kinda makes me wonder what _else_ they haven’t been telling me.”

_“Plenty,_ I’m sure,” Knock Out replied, his red optics narrowing with the reminder that Rafael could understand the language, and therefore the entire proceedings of the trial. He supposed he should get used to the fact that his personal business was now a part of Cybertronian history for all the galaxy to watch at their leisure, like some sort of reality TV show, but it still annoyed him. He could just picture the Autobots censoring the truth for not only Rafael and the other children, but all humans they encountered. From Ratchet’s reaction to the interface paraphernalia Knock Out had in his fingers, to how the Functionists had been crafting “designer Sparklings” through the Cold Construction process behind the Senate’s back for centuries before the war started, to the weapons of mass destruction the Autobots had created. Yes, there was _plenty_ to hide from the rest of the universe. “Cybertronian society has a very complex and controversial history that many bots find difficult to discuss,” Knock Out offered. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the Autobots have been trying to keep the darker side of our existence from you humans.”

_“All_ societies have their own dark past _and_ present issues they don’t like to talk about,” said Rafael. “That doesn’t mean we _shouldn’t.”_

“I agree,” Knock Out said with a shrug.

“Then _tell me,”_ Rafael said, his eyes suddenly going wide behind his glasses at the prospect of having answers to _all_ of the questions that Ratchet and Optimus and all of the Autobots had ever refused to give him. “I wanna know about CNA donation and Matrons and Sires and Functionism and your caste system, and _all_ that stuff! It’s not even in the Cybertronian Historical Database!”

“The Functionists probably wiped it from the drives once the war started.”

“But _you_ can tell me, right? You know all about it! You _lived_ it!”

Knock Out eyed Rafael like this entire conversation was a set-up. “You should ask Ratchet or Bumblebee.”

“I have,” Rafael huffed in frustration, “but they won’t tell me! They said I’m too young to understand.”

“I guess you’ll have to wait until you’re older, then,” Knock Out said as he shrugged again.

“That’s not _fair!”_ Rafael yelled, though he did not initially mean to raise his voice. “I don’t _have_ a lot of time like you guys! I’m human! I’ve only got...sixty, maybe sixty-five years left before I _die!_ Ratchet and ‘Bee know that, but they don’t _understand_ it, or maybe they just don’t wanna think about it?” he said as he blinked at that possibility, then shrugged to Knock Out. “My time with them, with _all_ of you, is limited. I need to start learning _all_ of it _now,_ before I start to forget everything when I’m older.”

Shifting on the slab, Knock Out flipped his frame over so that he laid on his front, and he crossed his arms under his chin as looked to Rafael. _“Forget_ everything? You know you don’t have to _memorize_ everything you learn, don’t you? That’s what data pads are for,” he pointed to the laptop. “Write it down so you can look it up later.”

“It’s not like that,” Rafael said, his voice almost pleading, and he was clearly worried now as he wrung his hands together and looked away from the ex-‘Con before speaking again. “Do you know what Alzheimer’s is?”

Knock Out lifted a brow to that, and ran a search for the word through his databanks. “It’s a disease in you humans, an aggressive form of dementia.”

“Yes,” Rafael nodded as he looked back to Knock Out, “and it’s _hereditary._ My grandfather had it and...and my father has it already. ‘Early onset’, they call it. He’s only fifty-eight,” Rafael paused then as he clenched his hands together even tighter and took several deep breaths, because he refused to burst into tears in front of Knock Out, and the thought of his father in that context definitely made him want to. “It means that genetically, I’m _fucked._ I need to learn everything _now,_ before it’s too late, in case my...my brain turns to mush I can’t remember anything or any _one_ or even how to read words on a screen,” he glanced back up to Knock Out then, and he was surprised at the look of concern the mech was giving him. This had been a shot in the dark for Rafael. He had honestly expected the ex-‘Con to laugh in his face, or at least remain indifferent to his plea, but that wasn’t the impression he was getting from Knock Out at all.

“Isn’t there a cure?” Knock Out asked.

“No.”

“And you have this genetic disease already? You’re forgetting things _already?”_

“No,” Rafael shook his head, “but my chances of getting it are high. _Very_ high,” Rafael said with a sigh, and he eyed his hands once more before he looked to Knock Out again. “So…will you tell me about all that stuff? _Please?_ I won’t tell Ratchet or ‘Bee or _anyone_ what you say, I _swear.”_

“You told them about the disease and they _still_ refused to give you answers?”

Rafael immediately flicked his gaze back down once more, his voice going soft. “No. I didn’t want them to worry. I didn’t want them to have to think about me forgetting them before I die. They have their own slag to deal with, just like you said before.”

“Why tell me about it, then?”

“Because you don’t like humans,” Rafael said matter-of-factly as he looked back up. “You don’t care what happens to me.”

Knock Out stared at Rafael and his statement. The truth was that he _did_ in fact care. He chalked it up to the memory he shared with Bumblebee, of feeling so horrible for having harmed Rafael. He felt like he owed the kid for his actions even though that mistreatment was not his doing. That the human was already worried about his mortality at just fourteen mega-cycles was horrible, and Knock Out was in fact startled by how much emotion he was suddenly feeling over Rafael’s predicament. It seemed a cruel fate for anyone, to forget everything and everyone they had ever known and then die while in such a state of delirium and confusion.

Still, Rafael was asking for a lot, and the information he sought was clearly against the Autobots’ wishes. Knock Out believed the kid would keep his word on remaining silent, he clearly had not told Ratchet of the “discussion” with Wheeljack, or Knock Out would have heard about it by now, he was certain of that. But at the same time, Knock Out felt that Rafael was right. Why _shouldn’t_ he know the truth, no matter how ugly it was? Early death or not, what harm was there in him knowing all of Cybertron’s history? And wasn’t it just like the Autobots to try and sweep all the unsavory and unmentionable parts of their society under the rug as though they never existed to begin with?

”I need to think about it,” Knock Out said before he shook his head and turned his back to Rafael again. “Let me think about it.”

 

Rafael’s grades had been slipping for weeks now, at least where his homework was concerned, but always aced every test, and it drove his teachers mad. “Too distracted”, said the reports that they sent home to his parents, “Daydreams too much.” His mother was livid and said he was throwing his life away by ruining the opportunity to get into a good university. Rafael couldn’t deny the teacher’s reports, he was very much distracted by things bigger than high school, bigger than the planet, even.

He was so distracted in fact, that one afternoon as he was walking home from school, he did not even notice when the black Chevy Urbana 500 with wide yellow pinstripes came rolling up alongside the curb beside him. Rafael walked several feet, his gaze downcast, before the car horn blasted so close it startled him into looking up.

“Hey, kid, you wanna go for a ride?” said a familiar voice as the front passenger door popped open.

“‘Bee!?” Rafael gaped, and he found himself readjusting his glasses just to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. “Holy _shit,_ look at _you!_ You got your T-cog back!”

“Hop in, let’s go!” Bumblebee said, and Rafael quickly jumped into the vehicle and slammed the door shut before they took off down the street.

“I can’t believe it!” Rafael glanced around the car’s interior like he was sitting in it for the first time. “How!?”

“One of the Neutral ships that came back to Cybertron had an extra in their supply cargo! Ratchet installed it yesterday!” the lights on the dashboard flashed in sync with Bumblebee’s voice as he spoke over the comms.  

“That’s amazing!” Rafael said as the seatbelt suddenly moved of its own accord and strapped him down.

“Mech, I feel _whole_ again! I’ve been driving around _all cycle._ Primus, I missed this!” Bumblebee headed straight for the long stretch of open highway between the town of Jasper and the military base where Unit E was located, obeying all of the traffic stops and signals until they were clear of the suburbs. They flew down the highway at a barely-acceptable rate of speed before Bumblebee finally took a turn-off onto a dirt road, one that lead far out into the Nevada desert. Once they were the only vehicle for as far as the human eye could see, Bumblebee came to a complete stop. “Wanna take the wheel?” he asked, “When d’you get that learner’s permit thing again?”

“Hell yeah, I’ll drive. I get it in a few weeks, when I turn fifteen,” Rafael said, unbuckling himself and sliding into the driver’s seat, which he was surprised he had to adjust before rebuckling the seatbelt. He suddenly realized that the last time he’d sat there, his feet had barely reached the pedals.

The two remained on the road, though not for long, as Bumblebee guided his tires off the dirt track and increased his speed whether Rafael wanted him to or not. There was no harm in working on the kid’s “offensive” driving skills, right? He’d learn plenty of defensive driving tactics from the humans. Bumblebee tuned his radio station and blasted the music once he found the old, familiar channel they always used to play, and the pair spent the next two hours doing nothing but churning up dust as they ploughed across the rugged terrain and twisted circling donuts through the desert sand. And when finally Rafael had had enough, he pressed the touchscreen on Bumblebee’s console to bring up the GPS, and he punched a location into the grid before taking control of the wheel and heading in that direction.

Bumblebee said nothing as Rafael led them back to the dirt road and down it for several miles before taking a left hand turn onto another. He recognized where they were now, and he drove onward, towards a large, mesa-like structure in the distance. The closer they got, the less it looked like a natural landform and the more apparent it became that it was really a huge, towering pile of rocks and metal and concrete. Rafael drove right up to the temporary fencing that had been set up around the perimeter mega-cycles ago, and he peered out the window as he put the lever into park.

“Why did you bring us _here?”_ Bumblebee asked as he too scanned the wreckage that was all that remained of Outpost Omega One. He was not upset by it, but genuinely curious.

Rafael unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door as he moved to exit the vehicle. “I haven’t been back here in a while,” he said, and he was smiling despite the gigantic scene of destruction laid out before them. He walked to the fence and leaned against it, cringing slightly at the wind that suddenly kicked up and blew a bit of dirt across his face. Hearing Bumblebee transform behind him, he glanced back as the mech came to stand beside him in just two steps. “I know it’s a mess now, but we had a lot of fun here, when it was still standing. It’s just nice to remember, y’know?”

Smiling to that, Bumblebee gave a nod as he lowered himself to kneel with one knee on the ground beside Rafael and look out over the debris. “Yeah, we did.”

Rafael smirked back to Bumblebee, though a sudden realization whisked his smile away as he stared up at the bot. “Now that you have your T-cog again, does this mean that you’re going back to Cybertron?”

Bumblebee had been anticipating such a question from Rafael specifically, and he hoped his answer would be enough to settle his friend’s nerves, for now. “No, not yet. There’s still plenty to do here.”

“But…someday, in the near future, you will, right?”

“Someday in the near future, yes.”

Rafael nodded to that, a frown crossing his features, and he would have said more on the topic but for the sudden ring of a cell phone coming from somewhere in Bumblebee’s frame.

Twisting one way and then the other, Bumblebee tried to reach a hand back to his doorwings, then popped open a chest plate to peer inside it as he too heard the ringing. “Is that yours? Where is it?”

“In my backpack. Open your other side,” Rafael said as he scrambled up Bumblebee’s right ped and ran up his leg to reach for the bag that was sitting inside one of the smaller compartments in Bumblebee’s chest plates. He quickly grabbed the phone from the front pocket and put it to his ear. “Si, Mama?”

Bumblebee could not decipher the faint sounds of the female human’s voice coming from the phone, but judging by the wince of Rafael’s face, it was not good news. He watched and listened as Rafael tried but ultimately failed to buy himself some more time and then heave a sigh once he finally shoved the phone into his pocket.

“She wants me back home,” Rafael muttered as he zipped the pocket of his backpack closed.

Bumblebee could not help but smile to that. The humans kept such tight reigns on their offspring. ”We’d better get going then,” he said, and he chuckled to the eye-roll Rafael gave. “Don’t worry, we can do this _all the time_ now.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Rafael relented as he walked up Bumblebee’s thigh to put the bag back into the storage compartment in his chest, though he paused there, still standing on the bot’s leg as he blinked to Bumblebee’s torso, to the mark on his right side. “That scar,” he said as he stared at the fresh weld for a moment before blinking up to Bumblebee’s face, “what’s it from?”

“From getting the T-cog replaced,” Bumblebee said as he closed his chest plate before peering down to his side. “It was there before, actually, from that time MECH took it from me, remember? I guess it can weaken the metal if you open it up along the same seam too much, but Ratchet was able to break the old weld and put it in just fine.”

Rafael looked to the scar again, to the familiar zig-zag pattern that wrapped around Bumblebee’s right side, from front to back. It looked just like the one Knock Out had. They had the same scar, _in the same place._ Suddenly an image of Knock Out seeping Energon from his side when Wheeljack had punched him that one afternoon came to mind, and Rafael felt his heart sink into his stomach. He could not believe he hadn’t recognized the weld on Knock Out for what it truly was from the moment he’d first seen it. Rafael turned and slowly climbed down Bumblebee’s leg, back onto the ground, and he took several steps away so that he could look up at the Autobot to view him fully, his eyes wide. _“Where_ did you say the T-cog came from, again?”

“A Neutral ship, from their supply stocks,” said Bumblebee, and he raised a brow down to Rafael and the look he was giving him. “That’s what Ratchet told me. Why?”

Raising his arms, Rafael rubbed both hands down his face, not caring that he left smudges on his glasses as he did so. Would the Autobots really do what he now suspected to have happened? Would _Ratchet_ really do what he suspected? Rafael held his hands over his mouth, unable to decide whether he should say something, wondering if his assumption was even correct, and the sudden look of worry Bumblebee was giving him made his choice even harder.

“What’s wrong?” said Bumblebee as he placed a metal hand into the dirt and leaned down even further, concern written all over his faceplates. “What is it, Raf?”


	47. A Break

Bumblebee’s tires screeched against the concrete floor as he rolled through the wide, open bay door of the Unit E hangar, his vehicle form not even coming to a full stop before he transformed and headed straight for the Medbay; he did not even hear or see the Vehicons until one of them was right up beside him.

“Sir! You wanna play lob ball?”

“Not now, Click Bait,” Bumblebee managed to be civil as he replied, despite the anger now coursing through him, but he paused when he saw the Medbay door was closed. That usually meant “keep out”, and for good reason. Regardless of how angry he was, Bumblebee respected the unwritten policy and instead turned to stalk down the hallway towards the lift.

He could not get the image of sheer anguish on Rafael’s face out of his mind as he rode the lift down to the first sub-level. His little human friend hadn’t wanted to say anything, he hadn’t wanted to believe what he thought was true, but then he’d broken down and told Bumblebee everything, about what he’d seen Wheeljack do to Knock Out, about what they had yelled at each other, about the leaking Energon and trying to protect the ex-‘Con because he thought no one else would, and the scar he had seen.

But Rafael hadn’t mentioned the request he’d made of Knock Out for the information regarding Cybertron’s true history, or why. _That_ he’d kept to himself, despite his emotions finally forcing him to spill the rest of it.

Bumblebee had driven Rafael home mostly in silence, though he’d had to reassure Rafael several times that the teenager wasn’t in trouble for revealing his suspicions. He told Rafael everything would be fine, but it definitely was _not_ fine, and while Bumblebee wanted to believe Rafael was wrong, and he knew he had to do his own detective work to figure out the truth, he was already fuming at the possibility that what Rafael was suggesting was true. The kid’s intelligence was well beyond his years, and Bumblebee had come to trust his word almost unconditionally. 

Entering the access code into the wall panel once he’d reached the cell, Bumblebee slammed his fist on the final screen and glared to Knock Out as the cell bars slowly twisted their way down into the floor.

Knock Out had heard the lift, but he did not care who was coming down the hallway. He didn’t care about a lot of things, as of late, and in the past few cycles he’d refused to leave his cell entirely, even after the Medbay was clear and the two recovering bots had returned to Cybertron. He was done sorting Energon crystals, he was done “helping” the Autobots rebuild Cybertron, he was done with “good behavior”. He still had not given Rafael a final answer on whether or not he would instruct him on the darker side of Cybertron’s past, despite the teenager still coming to see him every cycle.

Not even First Aid could get Knock Out to leave his cell, as apologetic as he was for refusing First Aid’s requests to do so, and when Ratchet had finally come down to _order_ him to leave, Knock Out boldly told the Medic to _make_ him, as though he were attempting to force Ratchet to try and move him physically, though Ratchet never did.

Bumblebee, too, had tried to get him to leave his cell, and still he had refused, so when Knock Out saw the mech standing there that evening, he assumed that’s what he was there for, again, and he was ready for a fight. He was not however, expecting the grime covering Bumblebee’s black and yellow frame.

“Primus, you’re _filthy!”_ Knock Out sneered _,_ and he quickly stood up from the recharge slab as the sight of the Earth Commander entering his cell. “What are you—” he began, though he was forced to cut himself off as Bumblebee approached. “Don’t come in here with your _dirt!_ ” Knock Out held both hands up as he backed himself into a corner. “I’m around that enough as is!”

Not having given a second thought to the state if his armor after driving through the desert terrain all afternoon, Bumblebee was momentarily caught off-guard by Knock Out’s statement, and he blinked to his servos and the coating of dust that had been left behind before remembering why he was there in the first place. He stalked right up to the ex-‘Con as his optics narrowed again. “It’s yours, isn’t it? When were you gonna tell me? Were you _ever_ gonna tell me?”

Knock Out knew what Bumblebee was talking about immediately, though he feigned innocence, at least at first, rolling his red optics and looking elsewhere as he replied. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t play _stupid_ with me. The T-cog. The one Ratchet put _inside_ me. It’s yours, right?” And when he did not get an immediate answer, Bumblebee leaned his faceplates so close to Knock Out’s that they almost touched, his optics narrowed and his EM field flaring rage. He knew anger was the wrong response, but the feeling was so strong it practically overwhelmed him. “You’d better _answer me.”_

The pulse of Bumblebee’s anger-laced signature and its intensity surprised Knock Out, and for one nano-klick as he looked back to the Autobot, he was afraid. Of what, he was not certain, he knew Bumblebee would never strike him, probably not even if Knock Out threw the first punch, but the mech’s fury was as imposing as Megatron’s, just for a moment, but then Knock Out threw caution to the wind and glared right back. _“Yes,_ it’s mine.”

Bumblebee hadn’t expected Knock Out to concede so quickly, and it startled him enough that he finally took a step back to blink in surprise before he looked down to Knock Out’s frame, his optics finding and focusing in on the welding scar there. What in the Pit had he been thinking!? Primus, was this _Ratchet’s_ doing? “Did they force you?” Bumblebee’s anger dissolved into apprehension and worry. “Knock Out, did they _force_ you to do it?”

“No,” Knock Out was still scowling as he crossed his servos over his chest plates. He was not sure how Bumblebee even knew to ask, but he wasn’t going to lie about it. The bot had figured it out, somehow, so he might as well know the truth. Well, _some_ of it, anyway. He wasn’t going to tell Bumblebee it had all been a part of his plea bargain, he would probably _never_ tell him that much.

“It was _your_ idea, then?

“Yes.”

Not knowing what to think of that, Bumblebee took another step back, his optics wide as he clasped both hands over his head in his shock. “Why did you _do_ this!?”

“You’re the _Commander!”_ Knock Out yelled back as he gestured to Bumblebee with both hands. “You need to be able to transform more than _anyone!_ Ratchet and I agreed it was best for you if we just—”

“ _You_ agreed!? You and _Ratchet_ agreed!?” Bumblebee shouted as he jerked a thumb to his chest plates, his anger rising again. “Only _I_ get to decide what’s best for my frame!”

Scoffing to that, Knock Out to a slow step to the side to increase the distance between himself and Bumblebee when he felt the mech’s signature switching once more. “Well you know _that’s_ not true! You’ve had bots looking out for your best interests since cycle one!”

“What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“I mean they’ve been _grooming_ _you_ for this Commander position for four million mega-cycles! What _good_ are you now that you have it if you can’t transform? You have to be _fully functional_ if you want to lead! Primus, even _I_ know that!”

“You should have consulted with me first. _Ratchet_ should have consulted with me first!” Bumblebee yelled, his doorwings sticking straight out behind him in his anger. “It’s _my_ frame! I should have some say it what happens to it!”

With the recharge slab now between them, Knock Out tossed his hands into the air as he rolled his optics again. “Oh, _I_ see! Suddenly after all these mega-cycles, you no longer trust what Ratchet thinks is best for your frame? After the _countless_ times he’s probably saved your aft!”

“This is different,” Bumblebee shook his head as he pointed a finger to Knock Out. “You _know_ it is!”

“How?”

“It just is!”

Knock Out narrowed his optics to that. He knew Ratchet had once offered _his_ T-cog to Bumblebee when MECH had taken it during the end of the war, and Bumblebee had accepted, if what the human children said was true. But _this_ was different, huh? _Gee, I wonder why._   “Because it’s a _Decepticon_ T-cog, right? Because it came out of _me,_ and now it’s inside of _you,_ corrupting your _perfect_ little Autobot frame, is _that_ it?”

“No!” Bumblebee gaped at the accusation, a little too dramatically. “That’s not it at _all!”_

“Psh, you’re a _horrible_ liar, just like the others,” Knock Out scoffed again. Primus, why did the Autobots even try?

Bumblebee bristled, because he could not figure out for himself whether that really was the reason, or if it was because it had all been done behind his back, without his consent, or that taking a T-cog from another mech just felt _wrong,_ or all of those reasons put together. Whatever it was, he did not enjoy being called out on it. “That’s not a _bad_ thing!” he yelled.

“Ohh! Well, you’d better be _careful,_ then!” Knock Out mocked Bumblebee sarcastically, giving him a fake look of concern before glaring once more, “That T-cog might _transform_ you into a _good_ liar, knowing where it came from!”

Gritting his denta, Bumblebee turned and stalked out of the cell into the hallway, venting heavily as he made fists at his sides. He couldn’t believe Ratchet would allow this. “You should have fragging _asked_ me, _both_ of you!” he yelled again as he turned back to Knock Out. “How can you _possibly_ think this is okay!?”

Knock Out was done with beings, both mechanical and organic, coming to his cell to yell at him for all of his misgivings. He too pushed his anger-filled signature outwards, and flashed his red optics menacingly in an effort to get Bumblebee to leave him the hell alone. “Get the fuck out of here! Put the bars back up and _fuck off,_ you ungrateful—"

“I’m _not_ ungrateful!” Bumblebee yelled as he pointed a finger again.

“Boy, you have a funny way of showing it! What do you want me to say, Bumblebee? Why did you even _come_ here!?”

“I _came_ here to say ‘ _thank you_ ’!”

“Well, _you’re_ _welcome!”_

“Well _good!”_ Bumblebee yelled as he punched the wall panel, and the metal bars slowly rose between them.

“Yes, _great! Fine!”_ Knock Out stepped to the bars as soon as they were up and continued to yell and glare after Bumblebee as the mech stomped towards the lift. _“Enjoy!”_

“I _will!”_

 

The door to the Medbay was open when Bumblebee returned to the ground floor of the base. He supposed he should have taken a moment to calm himself down, to go take a nice, long drive and clear his head, but his emotions were running too high for him to think so rationally, and he stalked from the lift and through the main hangar right into the Medbay with an EM field that practically crackled with negative energy.

Feeling Bumblebee’s presence well before he actually saw him, First Aid quickly looked up from the counter where he was attempting to give Ratchet’s hands a tune-up with delicate tools. He froze when he saw Bumblebee looming and angry in the doorway, then blinked to Ratchet in question.

“First Aid,” Bumblebee said before Ratchet could get a word in, “if you don’t mind, I need to speak to the CMO for a moment. _In private.”_

First Aid was already setting the tools down as Ratchet looked to him and gave him a silent nod, and Ratchet set about closing the palm panels of his left hand with his right as First Aid quickly headed for the door, giving Bumblebee a wide berth even as the mech stepped aside to let him pass freely.

Bumblebee closed the Medbay door behind him and simply stood there, waiting for Ratchet to make eye-contact with him, but the old Medic was clearly refusing to do so. Surely, he knew the reason behind Bumblebee’s rage, but apparently, he wasn’t going to be the first one to speak of it.

“How _dare_ you,” Bumblebee finally said as he stepped further into the room, because he did not want this conversation to be heard by the others in the hangar. “’I got it off a Neutral ship’, you said. _That’s_ what you said to me, isn’t it? Or did I hear you incorrectly the cycle I asked you where the T-cog came from?”

“Finally figured it out, did you?” Ratchet raised a brow to Bumblebee, his vocalizer and demeanor eerily calm. “Hmm, that took you longer than I thought it would,” he said before looking back to his hand as he reassembled his plating. He did not ask Bumblebee _how_ he’d figured it out, that part wasn’t important to him.

“I don’t know what pisses me off more, Ratchet. The fact that you lied or fact that you somehow coerced Knock Out to ‘willingly’ donate it,” Bumblebee hissed as he crossed his servos over his chest. “I don’t know, which of those things would piss _you_ off the most?”

“He doesn’t need it right now,” Ratchet muttered, refusing to make eye-contact once more.

“It’s his fragging _body_ part! _Inside me_!”

“I understand your concern.”

“ _Do_ you!? _Do_ you, Ratchet!?”

“I realize the situation isn’t ideal.”

“It’s _really_ not! We’re _Autobots_ , Ratchet, in case you’ve forgotten! We don’t _do_ stuff like this!” Bumblebee yelled, making fists at his sides when he realized that Ratchet was refusing to get angry about it with him.

Ratchet sighed as he picked up one of the tools First Aid had abandoned, and he touched the slender tip to one of the joints in his fingers, which caused it to flex in response. “I’ve been looking for a T-cog since the cycle you fell from the Skyway. There seems to be a galaxy-wide shortage, though I suppose that’s to be expected after four million mega-cycles of war. There’s a shortage of _everything,_ really. We live in desperate times, Bumblebee.”

_“I’ll_ fragging say! _Stealing_ organs from other bots to ensure our own goals are met! Sound familiar!?”

“It wasn’t stealing, he offered,” Ratchet replied, though he noted that Bumblebee seemed oblivious to the fact that Knock Out had given up the T-cog as a part of his plea bargain.

“Like he had any real choice!”

Ratchet glanced to Bumblebee again as he tried to project calm through his signature. He had not seen Bumblebee so angry and worked up in a long time, and while it did not frighten him, it was a bit concerning. “He _did_ have a choice, and he made it.”

Bumblebee cringed at the answer like it pained him, or as though his anger pained him, and he shook his head before he clasped it in a hand and began to stalk back and forth in the room in silence. Where other bots, in their anger, might have went on a yelling tirade, Bumblebee went mute. A million mega-cycles with no vocalizer before Ratchet had been able to outfit Bumblebee with the synthesizer had left him prone to being unable to put into words what he was feeling at times, and this was definitely one of them.

Rubbing a hand down his faceplates as well, Ratchet watched Bumblebee silently fuming for a few moments before speaking himself. “Everyone here wants to see you succeed as a leader. You can’t lead if you can’t transform. But, fine,” he shrugged as he set the tool aside, “if you can’t bear the thought of a piece of a Decepticon, former or otherwise, inside of you, then I can remove it and—”

“It’s _not_ that!” Bumblebee finally found his vocalizer again as he turned back to look at Ratchet, but he paused to eye the floor then as he considered all of his emotional reactions, and he briefly shuttered his optics as his doorwings drooped behind him. “…I mean…yes, it is. As much as I hate to admit it, a part of it is. I fragging hate it but at the same time, it’s amazing,” all of the anger drained from Bumblebee’s signature and was replaced with guilt as he looked back to Ratchet again. “I finally feel _complete_ again. And I don’t know what Knock Out’s been doing to maintain it all these mega-cycles, but his T-cog is incredible. I didn’t know transforming could _be_ so seamless. It never hitches, _ever_. I can shift from bot to alt and back again in less than _four_ nano-klicks. That’s _gotta_ be some kinda record!”

Ratchet finally relaxed in his seat a bit, when he felt Bumblebee’s rage slipping away. The younger mech was one of the few Ratchet had patience for, so he let the bot have his rant, but was silently thankful when it was over. In truth, he felt sorry for him, that it had come down to this, that this was seemingly his only option, but it had been Knock Out’s idea, and Ratchet would have never taken it from the ex-‘Con if it had been against his wishes. “Bumblebee,” Ratchet said with a vented sigh, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this, but you know that sometimes sacrif—”

“Sacrifices have to be made? Is _that_ what you were going to say?” Bumblebee interrupted, giving Ratchet a pained look. “You think I don’t know that? You think we don’t _all_ know that after Optimus…” he started to say, then shook his head as he turned from Ratchet again as he struggled to keep the wash from his optics. He didn’t understand why his emotions were all over the place. He should have been _happy_ to have a T-cog back, he knew that, but the circumstances behind it felt so wrong, and he couldn’t help but wonder how differently all of this might have played out if Optimus were still alive. “Frag, I really miss him,” he finally said with static in his voice, and he quickly shook his head at himself once more, and swiped at his optics with a hand. “Sorry, this isn’t very Commander-like of me,” he turned back to Ratchet then, who was now emanating sympathy. “I’m such a _hypocrite!_ I tell everyone else that we’re all the same, Decepticons and Autobots, that we all come from the same place, we’re the _same bots,_ and then my immediate reaction to getting a T-cog is that I don’t want it because it came from a ‘Con,” he clasped his hands atop his helm once more as he frowned. “What the frag is _wrong_ with me?”

“It isn’t easy to command others. ‘Bots will follow your example, not your advice’,” said Ratchet, quoting Optimus there, though he did not think Bumblebee would realize it. Those words had been uttered before his time. “I think you’ve been doing a fine job with the others, T-cog or not,” Ratchet added, and he could feel the appreciation of his words pulse from Bumblebee’s EM field. “But, listen: Don’t let this newfound opportunity go to waste. This is your second chance, now. And if you haven’t thanked Knock Out for it already, I suggest you do.”

Wincing to that, Bumblebee simply nodded, not wanting Ratchet to know the extent of his previous behavior. He _had_ thanked Knock Out, but he knew he had to do it again, properly, and throw in an apology with it as well.

 

Bumblebee left the Medbay and went straight back outside, transforming and taking off down the road for the exit gate. He knew he needed time to cool off, and he assumed that Knock Out did as well, so he put off returning to the cell immediately.

He spent several hours driving down the now dark desert roads with nothing but the roar of his own engine to keep him company, although his processor was working overtime to unpack and organize all that he had learned in the past twenty-four hours, of the T-cog, and Ratchet, and Knock Out, and Wheeljack.

It was close to 1:00am when Bumblebee finally returned to Unit E, and he was not surprised to find it as dark as silent as the desert, all of the other bots powering down in their respective quarters. Instead of heading to his own room, he hit the wash rack first, and cleansed himself of the layer of desert dust he’d managed to accumulate on seemingly every plate of armor that cycle. For one brief moment as he watched the silty water run down the grated drain at his peds, he considered heading back down to the first sub-level, to offer Knock Out his apology and genuine thanks now, but then thought better of it, as surely the mech was in sleeper mode.

When Bumblebee was at last on his own recharge slab in his own quarters, it did not take long for his systems to power down. He could already feel a slight ache in his shock absorbers from having run himself ragged over the rocky desert ground all afternoon with Rafael behind the wheel, but it had been worth every klick of time they’d spent together. He made a mental note to again reassure the kid tomorrow that it had been the right thing to tell him all that he had, and that there would be no consequences for his statements, and it was with that final thought that Bumblebee finally drifted off.

 

The sharp, stabbing pain in Bumblebee’s chest was so intense his systems powered him back on of their own accord, though he noticed there were no medical alerts flashing on his HUD once he was fully awake and functional.

Sitting up on his recharge slab, Bumblebee placed a hand on his chassis, the light from his optics casting the room in blue glow. Maybe he had dreamed the pain? He cycled air through his filters, waiting for a moment as he felt nothing. He was just about to close his optics when the pain flared again. It was right under his chest plates, like his spark was trying to burn a hole right through the rest of him. Bumblebee quickly swung his peds onto the floor as he gripped his chest plates with a hand, momentary panic setting in as he wondered if he was having some sort of spark attack. He was moments away from comming Ratchet when he suddenly realized he’d felt this pain before. It was a familiar pain, tied to a memory that was his now, but hadn’t always been.

Jumping up from his recharge slab, Bumblebee ran from his quarters and headed towards the lift.

 

Knock Out was not sure how his anger-fueled reaction to Bumblebee charging into his cell and yelling at him had turned into a pity party over Breakdown not being there for him in his time of emotional distress, but it had. Somehow everything that had taken place that cycle had gotten all tangled up in his Conjux Endura being dead, and now those thoughts were racing through his processor and made it impossible for him to power down for the evening.

Somewhere in the context of him being livid at Bumblebee, Knock Out found himself wishing Breakdown was there to either console him or jointly hate Bumblebee alongside him, or both, and that turned into the ever-constant reminder that Breakdown wasn’t there for him for _anything_ anymore, and it had sort of all spiraled out of control from there.

It was a dangerous road to go down, to even _think_ about Breakdown’s absence, Knock Out knew that. Not that it caused him any physical damage, but there was definitely physical pain. Sometimes when his thoughts drifted that way, it was as though his spark remembered the loss too, and then it would ache horribly, as though it were being forced to remember the instant its proverbial other half was ripped away.

In the past, when Knock Out was still a free mech as a Decepticon on the Nemesis, this was the time he would have been hitting the high-grade or injecting as many pharmaceuticals as it took to ignore the pain and dull his senses to its presence. Now though, when he was being forced to deal with the pain on his own, without any sort of chemically-enhanced relief, Knock Out began to wonder if it might kill him, and he honestly hoped that it would.

Knock Out didn’t comm Ratchet, he knew this wasn’t a medical emergency. There was nothing the old Medic could do, and Knock Out knew he wouldn’t be able to convince Ratchet to let him inject or drink anything that might make things a little easier on him, _Primus forbid._ He’d probably pull out the mood suppressants again, but Knock Out would rather feel horrible than feel nothing at all. Suppressants scared him, they reminded him too much of Shockwave.

But as Knock Out now marked two hours of ongoing agony, he began to wonder if he ought to comm Ratchet anyway. Maybe the mech would have mercy on him, once Knock Out explained where the pain was coming from and why it happened? Maybe the suppressants weren’t such a bad idea after all? Then again, Ratchet might also do absolutely nothing and force him to deal with the pain he was enduring anyway. 

Sitting doubled-over on the recharge slab with his face practically pressed again it and a hand clutching his chest plates, Knock Out paused in the heavy cycling of air through his intake vents when he heard the lift open at the end of the hallway and the metal footfalls walking briskly his way. He decided if it was either of the Medics, he’d beg them for something to take the edge off, he’d take _anything_ at this point, and he didn’t care if that proved he needed such things to get by in life, or if it made him look weak because of it. But when he opened his optics and looked up as the cell bars lowered into the floor, it was, of course, the last bot he wanted to see at that moment.

“Go. _Away,”_ Knock Out managed to say through clenched denta as he glared to Bumblebee before he turned his back to the mech and hunched his shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” Bumblebee stepped into the cell and sat at the opposite end of the slab, worry and confusion pulsing from his EM field, and he swallowed hard as he too clutched a hand to his own chest plates, his pain having worsened the moment he was within range of Knock Out’s signature. “Something’s wrong, I can tell. I can _feel_ it!”

Knock Out blinked back to Bumblebee at that, at the way he too was gripping his chest and trembling in pain, and Knock Out knew the bot was not lying when their EM fields mingled together in such close proximity to one another. He eyed Bumblebee up and down, unsure of what to say, though his anger from their previous conversation that evening resurfaced and he glared. “Maybe it’s your frame rejecting the T-cog,” he growled, though he knew such a thing was not even possible.

“No, it isn’t. I’ve felt this before,” said Bumblebee, wincing at another sudden stabbing sensation in his spark, “on the Nemesis, in that memory of yours…with Breakdown,” he hesitated to say, and it pained him even more when his guess was clearly correct, judging by the look of grief on Knock Out’s faceplates before he looked down and covered his face with a hand. “I think that’s why I can feel it, somehow,” he offered, though he was not entirely sure himself and had no proof.

Unable to speculate the cause for their shared pain himself given his current state, Knock Out’s anger was easily crushed by the truth of Bumblebee’s words. He tried again to calm himself with slow, heavy vents, but they did nothing, as usual. He wished he had the energy to continue his rant at how ungrateful Bumblebee was, and to interrogate him on how he figured out the T-cog had come from him in the first place, but he knew he was lucky he could even still hold a conversation, at this rate. For one nano-click, Knock Out felt inexplicably sorry for Bumblebee, that he was somehow able to feel the pain too, but that brief sympathetic response was quickly overridden by Knock Out’s own petty version of karma, that Bumblebee _deserved_ to feel the pain, since he was so unappreciative of the T-cog.

“How can I help you?” Bumblebee asked as he shifted closer, trying his best to convey how genuinely worried he was for the other mech, though he could tell his words were not believed. “Tell me what I need to do to help you.”

Knock Out finally peered up from his hand at that, his previous thoughts of the Medics being recalled, and he settled his now desperate gaze on Bumblebee. “I need a sedative.”

“No,” Bumblebee said firmly, holding Knock Out’s gaze to imply just how serious he was in his answer.

“High-grade, then.”

“No.”

Knock Out cringed at the responses as he gripped his helm in both hands. Stupid bot said he wanted to help but then denied him what he asked for!? Maybe the T-cog was turning him into a good liar already? Primus, that was quick. “Bumblebee, _please,”_ Knock Out finally just begged, though he covered his faceplates with both hands, because he could not bear to look in Bumblebee’s optics when he did so. This situation was entirely different to what he had begged Prowl for before the trial, and Prowl and Bumblebee were two entirely different mechs whom Knock Out was certain would not react in the same manner. Prowl liked the power it gave him, to have a bot begging him for _anything._ Knock Out was almost positive that Bumblebee would react better to his request if he acted embarrassed by resorting to begging to begin with. Knock Out was doing his best to manipulate the mech’s emotions, using his primary programming to try and analyze and respond with what he thought would make Bumblebee change his mind, and judging by the sudden outpouring of sympathy he felt from Bumblebee’s signature, it was working.

But despite his EM field, Bumblebee shook his head as he held firm to his original response, and frowned to Knock Out through his own pain. “No. You know you can’t have those things.”

Knock Out could not help the small hitch in his vocalizer as he choked back a sob, and while he had initially intended for this to all be an act, his exasperation and despair were suddenly feeling very real. He supposed he should have known better than to try and engage another bot in such a fashion when his own emotions were already running so high. _Primus, what a rookie mistake._

Now Knock Out couldn’t tell what hurt more, his head or his spark, and he suddenly felt himself losing control over the situation completely. He’d only meant to fake it all, the desperation and the tears and the EM field full of shame. It was all done in an effort to get Bumblebee to give him what he wanted. But now he really _was_ embarrassed, and his vocalizer really _was_ filled with static when he felt a surge of panic rising up inside him, much like he’d experienced during the recess at the trial. He only had himself to blame, he realized. He should have never tried to manipulate another bot when his own mind was in such a state of duress. He knew better than that. Primus, he was such a fuck up. He really had fucked _everything up,_ and suddenly that was all he could think about, and he quickly put his hands over his faceplates and barely managed a whisper when he spoke. “…I can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?” Bumblebee asked. “Let me go get Ratchet. I’m sure he can find you something that isn’t a sedative or high-grade, and—” but he paused when Knock Out quickly shook his head.

“I can’t do _this!”_ Knock Out tossed a hand into the air to indicate the cell and thereby the base and planet and life in general, “I can’t _be_ here anymore!”

Bumblebee recalled Rafael’s retelling of the apparent “apology” and agreement he had seen take place between Wheeljack and Knock Out, and the words Rafael mentioned he’d heard Knock Out say. Bumblebee knew the Wreckers did things differently, how they had unconventional methods, and how those methods very frequently crossed the line of what was considered normal, acceptable Autobot behavior. He supposed that perhaps Knock Out was following those customs by offering his neck to Wheeljack, though Bumblebee had questioned why the mech was suddenly so willing to play by Wrecker rules when he was so far removed from the group. Now it all made sense though, as he watched Knock Out tremble where he sat and try his best to hide the optic wash on his faceplates, and Bumblebee inwardly cursed himself, because he should have seen this coming, they _all_ should have seen this coming. He still wanted to apologize for his behavior earlier, but he knew now was hardly the time.

“Yes, you can,” Bumblebee offered, swallowing hard because he was suddenly aware that he was picking up on Knock Out’s emotions and pain much more than he ought to be, as though they shared the same signature. Was this some other form of proof they were somehow “connected” too one another? Bumblebee was trying his best to project calm, but all his efforts failed miserably as the burning in his chest surged once more, and now his head was throbbing as well, and he was forced to pause in his words to shutter his optics against the pain for a moment before continuing. “You did the right thing by staying here with us,” he said between cycling air. “You said at your trial that you made bad choices in the past, but you’re making _good_ ones now, you’ve already made _plenty_ with all the help you’ve given. You can do this and you don’t have to do it alone. We can help you, _I_ can help you, but you have to _talk_ to us,” Bumblebee tried to catch Knock Out’s gaze, but the mech refused to look at him as he shook his head again.

“I _can’t!”_ Knock Out said as he cupped his head in his hands and stared helplessly at the floor, angry with himself for yet again letting his emotions get so out of control, but droplets of wash were still running from his optics as his spark continued to recall the loss of his Conjux. “I can’t do this, it’s _breaking_ me!”

At that, Bumblebee slipped from the recharge slab to take a knee in front of Knock Out, and he pulled the bot’s hands from his helm with his own, gripping them tightly as he was finally able to look Knock Out in the optics. “If you break, we’ll put you back together, I _promise._ _”_

Knock Out was not startled by Bumblebee’s actions, but it was the resulting _feeling_ from those actions that made him go suddenly still. The pain in his spark and head suddenly eased considerably the moment Bumblebee touched him. Knock Out had forgotten all about that, how the past few times they had made contact with one another there was some sort of hazy tranquility that seemed to emanate from the Autobot Commander. Knock Out had been afraid to mention anything about it then, but now, as he blinked to their joined hands and then back to Bumblebee’s faceplates, he could tell the other mech felt it too, that his pain was also gone.

For a few nano-klicks, Knock Out continued to cycle air in and out of his vents and blink through tears before he finally had the presence of mind to reset his vocalizer and speak. “How—” he began, but it was the only word he was able to get out as both his and Bumblebee’s chest plates split down their seams, their armor and spark chambers suddenly slamming wide open in unison.

Gasping, Knock Out tried to pull away, but he felt his hands tightening their grip on Bumblebee’s as though he had no control over them, and though his optics were wide open, he could not see beyond the light of their sparks as they filled the cell, their red and yellow colors bleeding together into orange.

Bumblebee had taken Knock Out’s sudden stillness as a sign he believed him when he said they would help, but even he was surprised when the pain in his chest subsided so quickly. He was not expecting his words to have such an effect, and he was definitely not expecting his chassis to suddenly spring to life on its own and his spark to bare itself so willingly. He too felt his hands tighten around Knock Out’s as he watched the cell suddenly fill with gleaming orange light between them, but then the light began to change, the colors shimmering away as their sparks grew hotter, and Bumblebee felt a sudden surge of power rushing through him.

He felt as though he was leaving his body, as though his spark was being pulled from his frame and taking his mind with it, and he opened his mouth to shout in protest, but it was too late. All of Bumblebee’s senses were filled with the white light as it streamed from every crease in his armor plating and illuminated the hallway beyond the cell, and he felt himself slip away.

 

Suddenly they were back on the Skyway, the black and yellow Chevy Urbana and the red Aston Martin side by side as they raced down the elevated highway, headed south. As though both mechs came to the same realization of this at the same time, they both slowed to a stop together, each silent save for the hum of their engines before they both transformed and stared at one another with wide optics.

Knock Out blinked to Bumblebee, then to their surroundings, which were now familiar to him, but the sky overhead, in _this_ realm, was now glowing red. Dark clouds coiled in the distance, and a flash of lightning reached out like a spider’s web across the horizon.

“What the hell is this?” Knock Out asked as he quickly looked back to Bumblebee, who was clearly just as confused as he was. “Why are we back _here?”_ he said as he glanced around again before looking down to his whole, complete frame. He had both of his original hands and _all_ of his armor plating and _both_ shoulder-mounted tires and he had _transformed._ And just to make sure of that last note, he held up his left servo and engaged his circuitry, and watched as his armor plates rose up and folded back, and his hand constricted into his frame and was replaced by the long drill bit.

Staring at the weapon for a moment, Knock Out almost forgot that Bumblebee was there before he heard the mech move to stand beside him, and looked back to him as he transformed his servo back into his hand, both brows raised. “Are we _dead?”_

“You are both very much alive back on Earth, and right where you need to be,” said a familiar voice, and both bots whipped around to see Optimus Prime suddenly there with them, much as he had made his presence known the first time they had visited this realm.

Knock Out heard Bumblebee start to say something, but he cut him off as he felt all of his anger at Optimus suddenly flooding his sensors, and he stepped right up to the much taller bot to yell up at him as he clenched his fists. “Is that supposed to be some kind of _joke!?_ ‘Right where we need to be’!? I’m locked up for the next four-hundred-and-fifteen mega-cycles with  _no_  T-cog and  _no_  function and my fragging trial now burned into the memory banks of _every bot in the entire galaxy!_ ” Knock Out pointed a finger up at Optimus now, who merely stood there in silence. “I _helped_ your people! I told them _everything!_ I gave up my T-cog so your fragging…’prodigal Childe’ could rule in your stead!” he quickly gestured to Bumblebee with a hand before making a fist again, his narrowed gaze never leaving Optimus Prime. “I have  _nothing_  left! And _that_ was the plan all along, wasn’t it? You couldn’t have Megatron locked up because he _ran away,_ so you brought me back to suffer the consequences for _all_ the Decepticons, is _that_ it!?”

“No,” Optimus Prime shook his head, unphased by the angry signature invading his own, “that was never my intent, and your punishments are for your actions alone. If you—”

“Then why do you _watch_ me!? Why do I feel your presence all around me all the time like you’re just _waiting_ for me to mess everything up so you can go…go _haunt Ratchet’s dreams_ and tell him what a _horrible_ mech I am, or however the frag you would do it!? _Frag_ you, Prime!” Knock Out roared as he shook a finger up at him again. “You’re as manipulative as Megatron _ever_ was! You call this a second chance!?”

Optimus let Knock Out have his rant, and waited for him to finish with a stoic patience that almost certainly angered the ex-‘Con even more. But when he finally spoke again, he was still forced to cut his words short. “I do not watch you, I watch _over_ you, because I care for your wellbeing. Your life as it is now still remains your second chance. Knock Out, you must—”

_“No!”_ Knock Out practically spat before he turned and stomped away from Optimus and waved him off with a hand, “I’m _done_ with this slag!” He paused beside Bumblebee, who had been standing in wide-eyed silence at the whole scene, and Knock Out gave him a sudden look of regret. “I’m sorry,” he said, before activating his transformation sequencing once more and dropping down into vehicle mode, and he revved his engine to warm it up. “Keep the T-cog, I don’t need it anymore.”

“What?” Bumblebee blinked, quickly looking from Knock Out to Optimus and back. “Wait! What are you _doing!?”_

“What I should have done the first time,” Knock Out’s voice chimed from his comms, then with a rev of engines and a squeal of tires on the permacrete pavement, the red sports car sped away.

_“Knock Out!”_ fear suddenly gripped Bumblebee’s spark as he watched the vehicle disappearing, and he was nano-klicks away from transforming himself before he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, and he turned to look up at Optimus Prime as the taller bot held him back.

“Bumblebee,” said Optimus, with an almost parental-like tone, “you need to find the others.”

Bumblebee stared back at the now vacant Skyway then gave Optimus a pleading look. “But, he—!”

“…needs to find himself, first,” Optimus finished the sentence for him.

“I can’t just  _leave_ him!” Bumblebee yelled, panic laced through his signature and voice. “He shouldn’t be alone! I need to _help_ him!”

Shaking his head, Optimus finally removed his hand from Bumblebee’s shoulder as he took a step back. “No harm will come to him while he’s here, you have my word. But you need to start looking for the others now, without him.”

“ _What_  others!?” now Bumblebee began to anger as well. While he was thankful to be in the Prime’s presence, he was tired of the cryptic answers and being dragged into alternate realities with no explanation. “What are you talking about!?”

“The others that are like you, that carry the Light,” Optimus said, and he pressed a finger to Bumblebee’s chest.

Bumblebee blinked down to Optimus’s hand, then shook his head as he looked back up to his faceplates. “But who _are_ they? What do they  _look_  like? _Where_ do I look for them!?”

“You’ll know when you find them.”

“I don’t _understand!”_ Bumblebee spread his hands to Optimus in desperation. “What is this about!? What  _is_  the Light!?” And he was forced to pause in his words as a sudden wind whipped across the Skyway and he winced, holding a servo against it as a hail of dust and specks of debris rained against his armor plates. “Why are you asking me to _do_ this!?”

“Because, Bumblebee,” Optimus said, and he glanced to the horizon, where storm clouds continued to roil, “the Darkness is coming.”

 

Bumblebee awoke with a start, his optic shutters flying open as he reached with all his sensors to try and determine where he was. He quickly noted that he was back on Earth, back in the cell on the first sub-level of Unit E. He was slumped against the wall, his chest plates and spark chamber still wide open, his spark glowing golden and strong. But when he went to close his armor plating, he was only able to lift one hand to do so, the other weighted down by something unseen below his open chest plates. Quickly slamming his plating shut, Bumblebee blinked down to his trapped servo only to see Knock Out there on top of his arm, unconscious and sprawled on the floor beside him. His chest plates and chamber were still open as well, but his spark inside them was so dim and so small, Bumblebee could barely see it.

Worry and panic rising up inside of him, Bumblebee called Knock Out’s designation, gripped him by the shoulder and gently shook him, but the other mech remained still. Bumblebee was picking up no EM field or signature from him, no more shared pain in his own spark. Bumblebee closed Knock Out’s spark chamber and chest plates, then hoisted his frame back up onto the recharge slab, where he again took one of Knock Out’s hands in his own as he called the bot’s designation over and over, but he never received a response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll be out of town starting Saturday, May 11th, but I thought it would be mean to make you all wait an extra week for the final chapter, so I’ll be posting it on Friday, May 10th instead of Sunday, May 12th.


	48. A Failed Attempt

The blue sports car with the white and yellow pinstripes raced across the barren Cybertronian landscape of shining metal, a trail of dust kicking up in its wake.

It had been several weeks since Smokescreen returned to the Nemesis, as he’d been called away to assist at another location on the planet, and while he was eager to reconnect with anyone still onboard the ship, there was a certain amount of trepidation that had built up during his absence of how his presence would be received. He had quite the reputation among the masses now: “The Half-‘Con”, “The Bloody Butcher’s Childe.” He ignored all the name-calling, pretended it didn’t bother him, but of course it did.

Smokescreen had not made very many new friends among the returning Neutrals, and even some of the Autobots avoided him now. He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter what they thought, that he didn’t need new friends, but he would be lying if he said it didn’t upset him, at least a little bit. And all of that was why, as he drove towards the docking bays of the Nemesis that cycle, Smokescreen felt joy pulse through his spark when he spotted Arcee sitting outside Shuttle Bay Two, surrounded by the broken-down components of a MARK VII photon cannon.

Pausing in her work of disassembling the weapon for maintenance, Arcee watched as the familiar-colored vehicle neared, and she smiled as she stood up and stepped forward to meet Smokescreen halfway as he transformed.

“Smokey! I haven’t seen you in a stellar-cycle!” Arcee said, chuckling when the younger bot embraced her as though he’d been gone for ages.

“It feels like it’s been longer than that,” Smokescreen admitted with a smile as he released Arcee and stepped back. “Primus, look at you! You reversed your color palette! It looks great!” said Smokescreen as he gave Arcee’s now pink finish an appreciative look. “I remember you always joking about it back on Earth, but I like it!”

“Thanks,” Arcee’s EM field flooded with happiness for a moment at the praise as she looked down to her frame. “I used to wear it like this before the war, actually. I…guess I was just feeling a little nostalgic, or something,” she said as she smiled back to Smokescreen then. “Where did you just drive in from?”

“I was out scouting near Praxis, but then they called me back to the old Civil Defense building. They’re starting up the Elite Guard again,” he said as he pointed to the newly-painted mark on his shoulder of the Autobrand set atop three chevrons.

“Oh! That’s great!” Arcee exclaimed as she looked from the brand to Smokescreen’s faceplates, though she was instantly aware that the younger mech did not share her enthusiasm.

Shrugging, Smokescreen’s smile faltered for a moment before giving her a nod. “Yeah, sure. They made me a Lieutenant.”

“Even better,” Arcee replied, but her features softened at Smokescreen’s look. “You don’t seem too happy about it, though?”

“No, I am,” Smokescreen was quick to reply, but he shrugged just the same as he eyed the ground, “I am, I just…I dunno. It seems weird to go right back to where I started.”

Arcee raised both brows to that, and she eyed Smokescreen worriedly before she moved back to the weapon parts on the ground, motioning for him to follow. And perhaps she was projecting her own insecurities onto him, when next she spoke, but she did not want the young bot to have the same inner struggle that she did, if that was in fact the cause of his apprehension. “You don’t have to go back to the Elite Guard if you don’t want to,” she said as she sat back down among the parts and picked up her cleaning rag once more. “You know that, right? You can be anything you want now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Smokescreen said with a smile as he sat down across from Arcee, his gaze roaming over the weapons parts. Ever since the trial and subsequent meeting with Bumblebee and the rest of the old Team Prime, Smokescreen had been very careful in choosing his words around Arcee. He had silently hoped that when she came to his defense in front of Wheeljack, it had been an indication that she would be willing to speak to him about her past dealings with his Sire. But Arcee’s ultimatum to Wheeljack that cycle, that her former friendship with Knock Out was “none of anyone’s Goddamn business” had kept Smokescreen from asking her about it. He was already low on friends and he did not want to lose another. It was hard enough to keep in touch with any of the members of Team Prime anymore, for as the stellar-cycles wore on, they all seemed to be spending more and more time apart, as each of them was sent off to complete new tasks or missions both on and off the planet.

Still, in his relentless search for answers, Smokescreen now did his best to obtain them in a roundabout way as he picked up one of the cannon’s assembly coils and turned it over in his hands. “It’s not that they’re _making_ me do it, I just kinda feel obligated, but at the same time I sorta… _don’t?_ I dunno. If I pick a different function, I’ll have to start all over. None of the schools are up and running yet, and who knows how long that will take…What about you?” he asked, casually turning the focus around onto Arcee. “Are you gonna stay Warrior caste, or try something else? Or…go back to what you were before the war?” because Smokescreen knew, as did all bots, that the Warrior caste had been phased out a millennia before the war even started.

“I don’t know either, to be honest,” Arcee said as she fiddled with the weapon’s trigger mechanism, “but I like that I have options now.”

“Did you _like_ your old function?”

Arcee gave a faint smile to that, her optics never leaving her work as she replied. “Not, always, no,” she could see where this was going now, and was surprised it had taken Smokescreen this long to approach her on it. She was not sure how much, if anything, Knock Out had told Smokescreen about his past when the two were locked up in the brig for that one cycle, for she’d not been given the chance to speak to Knock Out before he returned to Earth. She did not think Knock Out would be willing to reveal his past function to Smokescreen, at least not so quickly after coming to find out the mech was his Childe. But her brows shot up at Smokescreen’s next question, and now she wondered if Knock Out had, in fact, disclosed more than she realized.

“Is that because you were someone’s servant?” Smokescreen dared to ask, and he held Arcee’s gaze as she stared at him.

“Why would you assume _that?”_

“At Knock Out’s trial, you said you knew him before the war…that you and him were friends.”

“Yes, I did, and yes, we were,” Arcee remained still, her hands no longer picking at the weapons parts in her lap.

“I read about how the Functionists used to segregate everyone based on caste, even outside of work,” said Smokescreen as he set the coil aside, “about how functions weren’t allowed to mix with other functions, or go to the same places, or even be seen talking together on the streets sometimes. You and Knock Out were friends. You said you hung out in the same social circles. When I was in the brig with him after the trial, I asked him what his primary function was,” he paused there, trying to gauge Arcee’s reaction, but she was eerily silent as she continued to stare at him. He could tell what he was saying was making her uncomfortable, but he pressed on. “He wouldn’t tell me exactly what he was, but he said that his function fell under the Servant caste. If you and him were friends while the Functionists were still in power, unless you were both willing to buck the system and risk being locked up, I guess I just assumed that you were someone’s servant, too,” he said, waiting for Arcee to make any clarifications she felt were necessary. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he was _way_ off course and they _were_ from different castes and they _had_ been willing to risk their necks for their friendship?

Arcee tried to remind herself that she’d been expecting this line of questioning from Smokescreen eventually, but this was not how she’d imagined it. The mech had been given access to the Hall of Records for at least a hundred mega-cycles before Alpha Trion put him into stasis, if she recalled Smokescreen’s recounting of his past correctly, which meant he’d had access to information, _lots_ of information, not to mention all the research he’d done on his own regarding CNA. She didn’t want to lie to him, but even if she did, she did not think he would have believed her.

Unaware of how tightly she was now gripping the trigger piece in her hands, she held Smokescreen’s questioning gaze for one more nano-klick before rubbing her fingers against her temples as she looked away from him. “Oh _Primus,”_ she said with a vented sigh, and eventually relented. She couldn’t lie to Smokescreen, he didn’t deserve that. “ _Yes,_ I was Servant caste.”

“I don’t _care_ if you were, Arcee. I don’t care that _he_ was, either!” Smokescreen offered when he picked up on the worry emanating from her signature.

“Then why even ask?” Arcee countered as she gave him a small glare when she looked back to him.

“I’m just trying to put it all together,” Smokescreen said apologetically, “I’m sorry. _No one will tell me anything_ , so I have to figure it out for myself.” _What do you all expect me to do!?_ he wanted to yell, but he didn’t, because now he saw Arcee looking suddenly guilty, and he felt bad about that. “I have to figure it out for myself, but I’m also worried. You were at the trial, they won’t let Knock Out be a Medic anymore, not for millions of mega-cycles. What is he gonna do for a job when he gets out of jail? What are they gonna _make_ him do on that work-release program while he’s still _in?_ When I asked him that while we were in the brig he freaked out, I mean not like, _outwardly,_ but I could tell he was freaking out, on the inside, I could sense it in his EM field,” Smokescreen held Arcee’s gaze again as concern crossed his faceplates. “What if they make him someone’s servant? They wouldn’t _really_ do that, would they?”

“Of _course_ not!” Arcee said as she set a hand on one of Smokescreen’s servos, because she could tell the mech’s anxiety was genuine, and she did not want him to have to walk around with that additional fear weighing on him. Now her guilt was twofold, when she realized Smokescreen really did have no one to talk to about any of this. Here he had been so open and honest about everything, and they were all still keeping him in the dark on so many levels. _“No one_ is going to make Knock Out take a job he doesn’t want to do. Bumblebee would never allow that to happen,” she said, trying to reassure him. _“Especially_ not being someone’s…servant. No one is going to force him to wait on someone hand and ped.”

“Was he really someone’s butler like that?” Smokescreen blinked, and he supposed that now that he thought about it, that did kind of make sense, but when he saw Arcee look away again, he knew his guess was wrong. “I don’t understand why you’re both so embarrassed about it.”

“Oh, he’s embarrassed about it _now,_ is he?” Arcee said as she thought back to her conversation with Knock Out so many stellar-cycles ago, and her optics narrowed slightly.

Smokescreen could not fathom a function that deserved to be shrouded in so much secrecy, and now he wondered how much he had missed in his research. Feeling like a bit of a failure then, he could not help the frustration that rose up inside him and seeped into his EM field, and he realized how childish his anger might seem, but he couldn’t help it. With a huff, he pushed himself back up to his peds. “I don’t understand why he can’t just tell me, or why _you_ can’t just tell me. Primus, Arcee, don’t you _trust_ me?”

“With my _life_ , Smokey, I swear!” Arcee said as she quickly hopped to her peds as well. She didn’t want to push him away when so many bots were already doing just that. She knew he deserved the truth, but she did _not_ want to be the one to give it. “It’s just… _complicated.”_

Smokescreen frowned to that. “Oh, it’s complicated and I’m too _stupid_ to understand it, right?”

_“No!_ Not at _all!”_ Arcee grabbed Smokescreen by the servo once more when he turned to go. “I’m sorry, okay? _Please_ don’t be mad.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?” Smokescreen said as he glanced back down to her with a look of real hurt in his optics.

Arcee vented a sigh once more as she put one hand to her helm, her other still gripping Smokescreen’s servo tightly. “Because…because Knock Out should really be the one to tell you, but you have to understand that he and I _both_ have a right to _keep that information to ourselves._ You of _all bots_ know about feeling the need to keep things secret,” she said as she looked back up to his faceplates, hoping he would comprehend that commonality in their situations.

“Yeah, I _do,”_ Smokescreen frowned once more, “and I know it _sucks_. I _hated_ keeping that secret from all of you. It made me feel _horrible_ inside. It made me feel like I wasn’t being honest with any of you, _ever._ I felt like I was hiding something from my best friends and it made me feel guilty, _all the time_.”

Arcee had not expected such a logical and honest response. _Dammit._ “Smokescreen,” she said as she closed her optics for a moment, considering all of her options before she finally opened them again, “alright. _I_ won’t tell you but…but we can go to Earth, to see him. I have to make an Energon run to Unit E tomorrow. Come with me, and we can go see him and…maybe if we’re _both_ there, he’ll tell you. Okay?” she said, and she was forced to pull air into her filters, because the prospect of having to reveal her function by proxy made her signature flood with nervous anxiety.

Smokescreen blinked to Arcee’s offer, which he realized was quite generous, given her obvious embarrassment and nervousness. He did not enjoy seeing her this way, it was _so_ unlike the fierce Warriorbot he had come to know her as in the past few mega-cycles, but while he did feel bad for her, it only piqued his interest more. “Okay,” he said, and he placed a hand over Arcee’s on his arm, because he wanted her to realize how truly grateful he was, _“thank you.”_

 

Unit E had been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, which Ratchet was thankful for, despite the uncomfortable reasons for it. He was, as Agent Fowler put it, “in the dog house,” a term that Ratchet had not fully understood until he checked the Earth’s internet and then realized how very accurate the description was. First Aid was still giving him the cold shoulder, even though he had sat in the Medbay one afternoon and allowed the smaller Medic to berate him for his unethical practices, compare his tactics to Decepticon-esq emotional abuse, and question his moral principles as a Medic and an Autobot. Bumblebee, though he had been apologetic for his initial outburst, now avoided Ratchet as much as he could, even on the cycles he had off, and Rafael had simply stopped coming to the base altogether once he’d confronted Ratchet with the truth, about how _he_ had been the one to put two and two together regarding the true source of Bumblebee’s T-cog, and how “super fucked up” that was, in Rafael’s own words.

The resulting tension among the Earthbound Autobots made Unit E a ghost town. The Vehicons were not sure why Autobot Command was suddenly at odds with one another, no one mentioned the T-cog business to them, though if working under Megatron had taught them anything, it was that to remain out of sight was to remain out of mind. With Bumblebee’s permission, the little group now frequently spent up to a week at a time away from the base, setting up camp at whatever Energon mine they were working on and keeping to themselves.

And yet, Ratchet soldiered on. _Someone_ had to make the tough decisions on this base. _Someone_ had to be the voice of reason, even when it appeared that reason was not necessarily the most righteous path. It was times like these that Ratchet found he missed Optimus the most, not because he knew the mech would have normally been that voice of reason to begin with, but because he missed his uncanny ability to somehow make everyone involved feel like everything would turn out all right in the end, regardless of the tough decisions being made. That was not, and never had been, a skill Ratchet possessed.

So it was that the cycle Arcee Bridged over to collect the most recent batch of Energon crystals, Ratchet was waiting for her at the Bridge controls. He was more than ready to receive her as she stepped out from the portal to greet him, as even _he_ was starting to get desperate for some conversation with someone other than Agent Fowler. He was not expecting Arcee’s drastic palette change, though.

_“Pink?”_ Ratchet said, blinking to Arcee’s frame as she neared. “I haven’t seen you in that color in mega-cycles.”

“Nice to see you again, too,” Arcee said with a smile, but as she watched Ratchet place a hand on the Bridge controls, she quickly moved to stop him. “Wait! I didn’t come alone,” she said as she quickly looked back to Smokescreen, who came walking out of the swirling aqua light a few nano-klicks later.

“Smokescreen,” Ratchet raised both chevron brows as he closed the portal once the younger bot was through, and then suddenly he felt his spark sink into his tank. He was quite certain he knew what the kid was doing here. Ratchet had requested of Bumblebee that he, as the CMO, should be the one to give Smokescreen the news regarding Knock Out, and Bumblebee had reluctantly agreed. The problem was that Ratchet had been putting it off now for more cycles than he wanted to admit. _“*Ahem*_ Magnus didn’t tell me you were coming, too.”

Smokescreen gave the old Medic a smirk as he stepped closer, and he resisted the urge to hug him, which he knew Ratchet hated. “Hey, Ratch’. Yeah,” he shrugged, then gave a brief glance to Arcee, “last-klick change of plans.”

“Looks like you’ve been busy,” Arcee said as she set her hands on her hips and glanced to the towering stacks of Energon crates that now took up most of the hangar. “Magnus said you have quite a stockpile. That’s impressive!”

“Production is tapering off a bit, actually,” Ratchet said, his gaze flicking between the two before he quickly turned and tapped at the screen of the comm station. “Well, I’ll comm the Vehicons and let them know you’ve arrived. They’re working out of a mine in Greenland right now and probably have a few more crates ready before you Bridge everything back.”

“No wonder it’s so quiet around here,” said Arcee as she looked back to Ratchet, then past him, towards the Medbay. “Where is everyone?”

“Working.”

Smokescreen followed Arcee’s gaze to the Medbay, then quickly raised a brow to Ratchet. “Is Knock Out around?”

Ratchet winced to the question, though it went unnoticed by both the other bots, as he still had his back turned to them at the comm station. “Ahhh, yes,” he hesitated, “well…”

“Can I see him?”

Raising a hand, Ratchet rubbed at the back of his neck a moment, wincing once more. He tried to convince himself that it was better to do this in person, as opposed to through external messaging while the kid was still on Cybertron. It wasn’t like the news was _that bad,_ he just knew Smokescreen wouldn’t take it very well. “He’s in stasis,” Ratchet said as he finally looked back to the younger mech, getting the reaction he’d predicted.

_“What?”_ Smokescreen blinked, his optics wide, but then they slowly began to narrow, and a tiny flicker of anger pulsed from his EM field.

“He put himself into stasis a deca-cycle ago,” Ratchet said as he shook his head, spreading his hands apart. “I’m sorry, I—”

“A _deca-cycle_ ago!?”

“I’m _sorry,_ Smokescreen,” Ratchet repeated, his own optics narrowing, “but it’s his _right._ He’s got five vorns behind bars. We only imposed the _sentence,_ not the _method._ If he wants to work off his time in stasis, that’s up to him. We can’t stop him.”

“You stopped him when he requested spark extraction!”

“Yes, because the _law states_ that he has no right to that option, just like Prowl said.”

“A whole deca-cycle and you didn’t _tell_ me!?” Now Smokescreen’s signature flared with disappointment. Here was yet another instance where they were keeping things from him, things that _mattered_ to him, things he _cared_ about. His doorwings sagged behind him for a moment as he stared at the floor, but his anger at being kept out of everything did not leave him. “Where is he, then?” he glared back to Ratchet.

“In the cell,” Ratchet vented a sigh, “we’re still waiting to hear back about a stasis pod from—” and he was forced to pause again as Smokescreen quickly stalked away from him, down the hall and towards the lift without another word. “Frag,” Ratchet muttered, shaking his head as he looked back to the comm station to finish typing his message to the Vehicons.

Arcee had been standing silently by, not having a said a word while Smokescreen yelled and Ratchet did his best to remain calm, but when Smokescreen took off, Arcee waited until the lift doors closed behind him before she gave her own scowl to Ratchet. “You should have _told_ him, Ratchet.”

“I was going to, I just…” Ratchet let the sentence go unfinished as he shook his head and glanced elsewhere. “I knew he wouldn’t be happy about it. Bots have been trying to keep _Smokescreen_ in stasis for most of his life. He probably thinks it’s a death sentence, which it is _not.”_

Arcee was tempted to be angry with Ratchet just as Smokescreen was, but she found she didn’t have the spark for it. She identified with Ratchet’s hesitancy to give the younger bot any sort of negative information about his Sire, there was plenty of it going around already. “He keeps asking me about our past friendship,” Arcee said, and she eyed Ratchet nervously at that, recalling the look of realization Ratchet had given her when she spoke at the trial. “He knows we were both Servant caste, but keeps asking me what our function was. Knock Out refused to tell him when they were in the brig. That’s why I brought him along,” she said, shrugging a shoulder as she gave a helpless look down to her peds. _“I_ wasn’t going to be the one to tell him, but I thought…I dunno. I dunno what I thought. He’s just upset that we’re all still keeping things from him like he’s…”

“…a Childe,” Ratchet nodded, and Arcee looked up to nod along with him. Ratchet rubbed a hand over his mouth, a dozen different thoughts swirling through his processor at once, though he only vocalized one. “Will you still tell him what you were, now that Knock Out is in stasis?” and Arcee held his gaze for a moment before she finally vented a sigh, and headed for the lift.

Ratchet had been surprised by the early-morning, frantic comm he’d received from Bumblebee the cycle Knock Out fell into stasis. Putting oneself into that state was not an easy task, it was not as simple as flipping an internal switch. It took concentration, discipline, and a certain amount of mental clarity that Ratchet had not thought Knock Out possessed, especially considering the state in which Bumblebee claimed to have found him in before he simply “fell over”, according to Bumblebee. Then again, the mind and brain node were temperamental things. Under enough stress, a bot’s mind could certainly shut down on its own and put a bot into stasis whether they wanted it or not.

Just to be on the safe side, Ratchet had run as many tests as were available to him on Knock Out’s unconscious frame, and he determined the mech was in no danger. Bumblebee had suggested reviving him, but Ratchet and even First Aid advised against it. There was no harm in Knock Out “sleeping off” a few vorns, and Ratchet was quite certain he needed the mental break, but he knew Smokescreen would never see it that way.

 

“I can’t believe he did this,” Smokescreen said as he hung on the bars of the cell with both hands and stared at Knock Out’s unmoving frame on the recharge slab, “I can’t believe he fragging did this. Who would _willingly_ put themselves into stasis!?” he glanced to Arcee then, who was now standing at his side.

“Smokey, try to look at it from his perspective,” Arcee offered, though she did not think anything she said at this point would help Smokescreen understand.

“He was supposed to be on a work-release program! I thought Ratchet and Bumblebee were supposed to give him a job! He was supposed to be given the opportunity to prove himself! He can’t _do_ that like this! What the hell was he thinking!?”

Arcee shook her head as she crossed her arms, but it was more of a protective hug for her own frame. “I don’t know…Maybe it was just too much for him?”

“I should have come to see him sooner,” Smokescreen vented a sigh as he shuttered his optics and let his forehelm lean against the bars, guilt emanating from his signature. “Frag. I told him he could do this, I told him he could start over and it would work out….”

“This isn’t your fault,” said Arcee as she reached out to place a hand on Smokescreen’s servo, once she felt his EM field shift, “none of it is. You don’t owe him anything.”

Smokescreen’s doorwings hung low on his back as he remained with his helm pressed against the bars. “D’you know why he dropped out of the IMA?”

“He told me he dropped out because he was failing,” Arcee said, watching him.

“Because he was failing _and_ to take care of _me._ He told me my Matron kept getting called out to build berms around Iacon to protect the city, so he just…he just _gave up_ and stayed home with me instead,” Smokescreen said as he finally looked back to Arcee. “I kept him from becoming a Medic.”

Arcee’s mind immediately went back to her past conversation with Knock Out in the Medbay when he’d fixed her leg, and how even then she was certain he was holding back information from her regarding the reason he’d left the IMA. She would have never guessed it was to watch over a Sparkling, let alone _his_ Sparkling. “No, you didn’t,” said Arcee, and she tightened her grip on Smokescreen’s arm, “if he was failing anyway, he might have just flunked out regardless of whether you were there or not. You don’t know.”

“Yeah there’s a _whole lot_ I don’t know. He was trying to make something of himself and then I came along and fragged it up. He dropped out of the IMA and then he dropped out of the Wreckers and then he became a ‘Con,” Smokescreen said as he vented a sigh. He saw the events of Knock Out’s life as one, big, millions-of-mega-cycles-long domino effect, and he imagined himself being the first piece to fall.  

“Smokey,” Arcee sighed as well, “it’s _not_ your fault. Look, even if he _had_ become a licensed Medic, he still might have ended up on the ‘Con side anyway. It was a difficult time. We were _all_ being forced to make difficult choices.”

Arcee’s words only served as yet another reminder to Smokescreen that he had missed the entire war. There had been no hard choices for him, no true loss of friends or family, save for his Matron, whom he could barely remember anyway. He knew he was lucky not to have suffered the way the others had for so long, but in an odd way, it had always made him feel left out, or that his measly two mega-cycles with Team Prime was worth nothing, even though he’d literally saved Optimus Prime from certain deactivation, all by himself. It was a lonely existence, to be the only one of his kind to have missed the last three million mega-cycles of history.

“I know,” Smokescreen said as he finally shook his head at himself and the thoughts swarming his processor, and then he gave Arcee a knowing look. “You’re not gonna tell me what you and him were now, are you.”

Arcee shuttered her optics, placing a hand against her forehelm as she struggled to make yet another difficult choice. She understood Smokescreen’s desire to know his lineage, but at the same time, she felt he was obsessing over the wrong part of the bigger picture. Dropping her hand back to her side, she eyed Knock Out’s form through the bars for a moment before finally looking back up to Smokescreen.

“It doesn’t matter. What you’re looking for, that information, it _doesn’t matter._ I’m sorry we’re keeping you in the dark on this, but you need to respect our right to privacy. Knock Out and I have spent our _whole lives_ hiding what we were from everyone else. Five million mega-cycles, for as long as we’ve known one another. He kept his silence, and I kept mine, even when we ended up on opposite sides, even when we could have used that information against each other,” said Arcee, placing a hand back on Smokescreen’s servo, because she could already see the disappointment in his optics, and she felt horrible about it. “If I tell you what I was, I’m also telling you what _Knock Out_ was. He chose _not_ tell you in the brig, and I’m not going to take that choice away from him now. Do you understand?”

Smokescreen knew Arcee’s answer before she even finished speaking. He held her gaze for as long as he could before disappointment forced him to look down to his peds, and he nodded as he replied, “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” Arcee said again as she felt the frustration radiating from Smokescreen’s signature.

Nodding once more, Smokescreen gave a final glance to his Sire in the cell before he looked back to Arcee. “For what it’s worth, I’ll bet you were a really great friend to him before the war. You _still_ are. I mean, you’re looking out for him, even now. Even with me pestering you. You’re a good friend, Arcee,” Smokescreen said, and he offered a faint smile to that before he turned and headed toward the lift, leaving Arcee to stand at the cell bars alone.

With a vented sigh, Arcee watched Smokescreen walk away. She considered what he had said, but she could not agree with him. She did not feel like a good friend to anyone. She glanced Knock Out’s still frame and shook her head as she set her hands on her hips. “I hate you, you know that?” she uttered, knowing she would receive no reply. And even though she had spoken those words in jest in the past, and then in truth in the present, Arcee realized now that she had never really hated him, she just hated what he had become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this story, I certainly never thought it would amount to over 250,000 words, over 5,000 views, and countless wonderful comments from readers.
> 
> Thanks to all of you who stuck with it to the end of Part I, and thank you SO MUCH for all of your praise and comments, I am truly not worthy, and I appreciate all of you!
> 
> It’s been a hell of a ride, but I need a break! Part II is already in the works, I just need to build up a bit of a chapter buffer before I get to posting again, so keep an eye out for it starting in late September/early October 2019. 
> 
> Do you want to see a particular character in Part II? Comment below and I may work them into the upcoming plotline. I’m open to suggestions!


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